01 Fifty-three days

The data come from Spain's state meteorological agency, 1991–2020 normals. Annual precipitation totals 337.3 millimetres, the annual mean is 16.2 °C and sunshine runs to 3,014 hours a year. It is a textbook continentalised Mediterranean climate: dry, extreme and very bright.

Three thousand and fourteen hours of sunshine and a stone old town with barely any trees. Shade here comes from buildings, and only at certain hours.

A single-arch stone bridge seen at dusk, a crenellated tower at its end and, above the escarpment behind, a square four-towered building crowning the hill; the street lamps are already lit and the sky is a uniform blue twilight.
The Alcántara bridge as the day drops. In summer this is the first hour you can be outdoors without hunting for shade.Rafesmar / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0 ES·CC BY-SA 3.0 ES

02 Summer, seriously

July has a mean high of 35.1 °C and August 34.5. The series record is 44.2 °C, measured on 13 August 2021, and there are readings above 42 in June and July. In those two months relative humidity falls to 34% and 37%: dry heat, which deceives and dehydrates.

And it rains practically nothing: 5.7 millimetres in July and 8.6 in August, with one rain day in July and one and a half in August. July also totals 391 hours of sunshine, the year's highest, more than twelve a day.

Toledo's specific problem with that heat is topography. The old town sits on a hilltop and every street climbs or drops; walking here is not walking on the flat. At 35 degrees, a two-hundred-metre climb stops being a stroll.

A very narrow street in shadow between two walls of ashlar and brick, with two studded round-arched doorways on the right, iron balconies above them and a wrought-iron lantern hanging from the wall; the cobbled paving curves downhill towards the far end, where a little light gets in.
A street in the old town at midday in August: the city's only continuous shade is the shade its own walls throw.José Luis Filpo Cabana / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 3.0·CC BY 3.0

03 Winter counts too

The other extreme surprises more, because nobody associates central Spain with hard cold. January has a mean of 6.8 °C and mean lows of 1.7, and the series record is −13.4 °C, measured on 12 January 2021. December and February have mean lows of 2.5 and 2.6.

And there is little light: December has 136 hours of sunshine and January 152, against July's 391. With December's relative humidity at 77%, the mornings are damp and cold in a way that does not match the idea one arrives with about Castile.

A completely empty sloping street under a white overcast sky, a long rubble wall on the left and, on the right, a row of brick houses with iron balconies and furled awnings; the new paving runs straight downhill out of sight.
An overcast winter day. At 136 hours of sunshine in December, this is the light to expect for much of the month.Pablo Costa Tirado / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0·CC BY-SA 3.0

04 The four good months

April, May, September and October. Those four and no others if you can choose. May has a mean of 18.4 °C, highs of 25.2 and 298 hours of sunshine: the year's best combination, with the surrounding country still green before it dries out.

September is close behind at a mean of 22.1 °C and 273 hours of sunshine, with the advantage of lower light, which suits a city of golden stone better than June's vertical sun. October drops to 16.6 but is the wettest month of the year — 48.7 millimetres over 6.5 days — which is still very little.

If you have to come in summer, do it the way it is done here: out first thing, indoors between one and six, and out again as the day falls. At 391 hours of sunshine in July, the city is not walked at midday; it is endured.

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Ana Larrea

When To Go editor · Flowtravel

Ana reads the climate data before the guidebooks.

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