There are cities you visit and cities you walk. Segovia clearly belongs to the second group, and not out of any tourist virtue: because its shape leaves no alternative. The old town occupies a narrow spur between two rivers, and on a spur there are no shortcuts.
01 The city is an axis, not a map
The distance between the aqueduct, at the low end, and the Alcázar, at the tip, is barely over a kilometre. That means there is nothing to plan: you come in one end and leave by the other. What is worth planning is how many times you want to do that stretch, because it is not flat, and at 1,005 metres the climb is noticeable.
02 The second floor is below
What separates the walker from the visitor is the descent into the Eresma valley. Down there you find the riverside path, the old mint of 1583, the mills, and the twelve-sided church of the Vera Cruz, consecrated in 1208. It takes about two easy hours, with a final climb back up.
It is also the only part of the trip where you will be almost alone. Organised groups do not come down, because there is no way to do it by coach and get back in time. If you want a monumental city without the feeling of queuing, this is the hour and the place.
From above you see Segovia. From below you understand why it is there.
03 Arriving without a car, and staying
The train from Madrid-Chamartín to Segovia-Guiomar takes about 27 minutes, with up to thirteen services a day. The station is outside town: city bus line 11 drops you beside the aqueduct in about fifteen minutes and costs roughly two euros. From there on, a car gets in the way more than it helps.
The decision that really changes the trip is sleeping inside the old town. Segovia gets an enormous number of day visitors, and by mid-afternoon the flow reverses: the coaches pull out and the streets along the axis empty. Whoever stays has, for a few hours, a city of 52,000 people to themselves.
04 Here the clock is set by lunch
Worth knowing before you plan your day: the city's dish is roast suckling pig, and it is a midday meal at a long table. The local guarantee mark requires animals of no more than twenty-one days, between 4.5 and 6.5 kilos live weight, fed on nothing but mother's milk. This is not a snack between two sights.
For a walker, that has a practical consequence: a long lunch sits badly with the descent into the valley. The sensible thing is to split them across the two days, keeping the long walk for the morning when you eat light and saving the roast house for the other midday.
05 When this city is not for you
Segovia does not work well in two specific cases. The first is the gradient: if you are dragging wheeled luggage over cobbles, or if a continuous slope is a genuine problem, the most interesting part of the trip is out of reach and the rest becomes uncomfortable.
The second is the time of day in summer. In July the average high is 29.7 °C and the old town is stone without shade: between one and six, walking stops being a pleasure. If you can only come in summer and only at midday, it is not that Segovia is the wrong choice, it is that you are visiting in the one time slot in which it will not let itself be walked.
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