The mystery day trip yesterday took us to Xàtiva, a small city about 40km south of Valencia. Kai and I met Carolina and Gianni at the train station and it turned out that Carolina had prepared a huge picnic for later!
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The train took us in 45 minutes to Xàtiva and when we arrived we walked up the small streets and already could see our destination: Castillo de Xàtiva, the castle of Xàtiva.
The castle once was a massive defensive structure.
From Spartans: The ancient settlement of Xativa was founded by the Iberians who prospered here and minted coinage before they were ousted first by the Romans and then by Hannibal’s Carthaginians on their way to Rome. A Visigothic episcopal seat, the town was conquered by the Moors in the 10th century before being taken by Jaime 1 in 1244. The town was eventually burnt in 1707 and was rebuilt but lost its political importance.
The walk up the mountain followed an ancient trail that led us past some buildings that were used in those times. One of them was building that served as a refrigerator and another that served as water storage in the times before there were irrigation canals.
When we arrived at the castle we decide to go up to the highest point, the western side of the castle. All buildings or what was left of them had a function, such as the chapel, prison, oven, vaults, guard rooms, etc.
In one of the gardens we found a great place for our picnic and the amount of food Carolina had brought was massive! We had all kinds of delicacies such as tortillas, salsa, jambon, croquettes, aceitunas (olives), pimentas, seafood paste wrapped in pimentas and two lovely bottles of wine.
After our picnic we moved on up the western part and as the sun was setting the light on the castle and the valleys below was of an extraordinary beauty!
For me it was great to visit a place like this as these ruins obviously reminded me of the Great Wall in China I have visited so many times. I will certainly be back here!
[...] we took the train to X‚àö‚Ćtiva to see the castle on the top of the hill there. I already visited in November 2008, but for Mia and Inge it was a first timer and because the last time we didn’t have time for [...]