AVILA (Rom. Abula, Avela, etc.), capital of the province of that name; 54m. W. by N. of Madrid. Pop. (193o) 15,223. The old walled city, on the broad back of a ridge sloping west to the river Adaja, commands both the approach to the pass across the Central Sierras in the angle between the Sierra de Guadarrama and Sierra de Gredos, and the junction of two im portant roads, one downstream, coming from the south-west by Plasencia, the other upstream, converging on the cut made by the Adaja between the Sierra de Avila and the Sierra Malag6n.
The dark granite walls, into which the apse of the cathedral is built ; the ancient churches (San Vicente, San Pedro, Santo Tomas and San Segundo) and the mediaeval town-houses of the nobility of Castile make Avila de los Caballeros the place where may now most easily be breathed "the spirit of the old knightly Catholic Castile." The convent and church of Santa Teresa (1515-82) occupy the site of the house in which the saint is said to have been born.
See O. Jiirgens, Die Spanische State (Hamburg, 1926, bibl.) .