A fairy-tale castle. An ancient Roman aqueduct. A winding river walk. An impressive Gothic cathedral.

The stuff of poetry, to be sure. So it's not surprising that this Castilian city has drawn writers, artists and poets for centuries.

Some have likened the city to a ship, with the castle rising on its crag as the prow, and the pinnacles of the cathedral rising like masts behind it and the aqueduct trailing behind like a rudder.

Some have simply taken a look at the castle and fallen in love with its quintessential castleness.

It is also not surprising that this city, with its strategic location, has been ruled by Romans, Visigoths and Moors before the Spanish.

The Romans, who dominated Spain for some 500 years, built the aqueduct in the 1st century to carry water from the Frio River about nine miles away. The double tier of granite arches were built without mortar and stand some 96 feet high. It carried water until the 20th century.

Fanciful folk in the Middle Ages claimed the aqueduct had been built overnight by the devil after a young water-girl offered to sell him her soul in exchange for having water reach her door. Of course, she was able to pray her way out of the deal.

The castle, or Alcazar, was built by the Moors in the 12th century, but after Spain was retaken, it became the residence of the kings of Castile, who each added new parts to the building. However, the present structure is mostly a reconstruction following a fire in 1862. By then they knew what a castle should be.

Need more fodder for poetic works? Consider the fact that Isabella first met Ferdinand here and was later proclaimed the Queen of Spain in a nearby church in 1474, nearly 20 years before sending Columbus off to find new worlds.

And, there's the fact that Segovia was once the headquarters of Spanish Inquisitor Torquemada.

The place oozes charm and offers wide scope for the imagination.

Toledo: City of quests

You can't visit Toledo without thinking of Don Quixote, the Man of La Mancha — and not just because images of him decorate almost every store window. This city is in the heart of the La Mancha region, after all.

But there's something about this extraordinary walled place that is inspiring in a questful way.

Maybe it's the fact that the Toledo Cathedral took more than 200 years to build and came out in a mixture of Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque styles that each spoke of faith to the particular builders.