AbstractRefreshableWebApplicationContext has been extended by WebXmlApplicationContext. We can write the context definition related to the root application context in applicationContext.xml and keep it under WEB-INF as it's the default location from where the context definition will be loaded. The XXX-servlet.xml file is loaded to load the controller definition, as in the case of the MVC application. Also, we can override the default locations by configuring contextConfigLocation for context-param and init-param.