Alcazar of Segovia

The Alcazar of Segovia is a fortress and former royal palace in Segovia, Spain, perched on a rocky outcrop above the confluence of the Eresma and Clamores rivers at the western edge of the city's old town. Built over Roman foundations and existing in some form since at least the twelfth century, it was expanded under Castilian monarchs including Alfonso VIII and John II, whose fifteenth-century Gothic tower gives the building its distinctive silhouette, and it later served in turn as a royal archive, an armory, a state prison, and a Royal Artillery College and military academy before becoming a museum in 1998. Its Hall of the Galley takes its name from a coffered ceiling shaped like an inverted ship's hull, and the castle's turreted profile is often cited as an inspiration for the castle in Disney's 1937 film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. UNESCO inscribed the Alcazar as a World Heritage Site in 1985 as part of the historic old town and aqueduct of Segovia.