Canaleja Viewpoint

Where the row of houses on Calle Real breaks off, just before reaching the spot where the San Martín Gate once stood and where the Casa de los Picos is located, there is a long parapet. It was built in the 19th century to close off a narrow passageway – La Canaleja – which led to the San Millán neighbourhood. The result of the project was this spectacular balcony from which a large part of the neighbourhood can be seen, including the churches of San Millán and San Clemente, and the fields tilled on the flat land; the backdrop, with its distant blue hues, is provided by the mountains of the Sierra, with the jagged peaks of Siete Picos – a quarry, as the people of Segovia say, from which the devil extracted the stone for the Aqueduct – the cone of Montón de Trigo and the unmistakable silhouette of the Mujer Muerta, the inspiration for many legends.