Toledo - Knights Museum

One of the "things to do" in Toledo was to visit a museum of the Knights Templar and various other Orders, including the Knights of St John Hospitaller who eventually became the Knights of Malta.

The museum was quite good. Even the building had a claim to fame, which I forget, something about being the only original building built by the Knights (Templar) still in use - or something like that anyway. The exhibits were good and had good detailed explanations.

One panel of course discussed the Knights of Malta and the Great Siege of 1565.
Unfortunately this panel had one rather serious error and a rather questionable piece of information. The error was that the panel listed the date as 1556 rather than 1565, which could have been a simple transposition error. The guys there were very friendly and helpful, and made a note of the error though I am not expecting them to update the panel itself any time soon - though you never know.


I have blown up the offending piece of the panel, where you can clearly see the wrong date. You can also read the "questionable piece of information" (it is in Spanish though!). According to my poor - but getting better :) - Spanish, the last sentence (starting with "Solo la ayuda...:) reads :Only the help of the Spanish army which was in Sicily prevented it (Malta) from being conquered by the Turks". From what we learned at school and the various potted histories of the siege this can be interpreted as correct. After all the Turks did leave the island when they heard the news of a Christian army arriving in the north of the island. What this omits to mention however is that the Spanish did not get involved in any fighting - may never have evn laid eyes on the enemy, in fact - and that they had steadfastly refused to come to the aid of the Knights and the Maltese until they felt the spirit of the Turks had been broken. I did try to explain this to them but my Spanish is nowhere near up to the standard required for this type of explanation so I dropped it.