Ávila (Latin: Abila and Obila) is a Spanish city located in the autonomous communityof Castile and León, and is the capital of the Province of Ávila.
It is sometimes called the City of Stones and Saints, and it claims that it is one of the cities with the highest number of Romanesque and Gothic churches (and bars and restaurants) per head in Spain. (Zamora, a city of similar size, claims the greatest number of Romanesque churches in Europe.) It is notable for having complete and prominent medieval city walls, built in the Romanesque style. It The city is also known as "Ávila de los Caballeros", "Ávila del Rey" and "Ávila de los Leales" (Ávila of the Knights, the King and the Loyalists), each of these epithets being present in the citys tandard.
The writer José Martínez Ruiz (Azorín), in his seminal book El alma castellana (The Castilian Soul), described it as "perhaps the most 16th century city in Spain", and it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985
