The Alcázar from the Pradera de San Marcos

From inside the city the Alcázar is a courtyard and a gate. From the Pradera de San Marcos — the meadow where the Eresma and the Clamores meet, below the north side of the rock — it is the castle from the storybooks: slate spires, a curtain wall, and a prow of stone driven out over the valley.

The meadow gives you distance and a clean foreground, which is exactly what the view from the town does not. Two people small in the frame with the whole castle above them is the picture; poplars along the river fill the sides, and in autumn they turn yellow and change the palette completely.

The rock faces north-west, so the working light is late afternoon into sunset, when the walls go warm and the spires catch the last of it. Mornings are cool and even, and in autumn mist often sits in the river bottom until the sun clears it. Winter is cold — Segovia is at a thousand metres and frost lies in the meadow well past nine in the morning.

It is a ten-minute walk down from the city walls and a stiffer walk back up; there is also a road round to the meadow if you would rather drive. The grass is soft after rain, so bring something to stand on for anyone in delicate shoes. Five minutes further along the road is the twelve-sided Vera Cruz church, worth the detour for a second frame.