The Mosque - Cathedral in Córdoba was the most amazing thing that I saw in Spain. (I think Doreen was more impressed by The Alhambra. But that may be because of Washington Irving)
Started in 785 on the site of a Visigoth church (The Basilica of Vincent of Saragossa), the building went through extensive building programs in the subsequent 600 or so years. There is a great representation of this here. where you can see all the changes.
But I get ahead of myself.
The city is built on the Guadalquivir River (which means something like "Big River") and has a very famous old multi-arch Roman bridge as you enter:
It has its own Alcazar (which I believe just means palace or fortress) that stands at the end of the bridge.
There are four mills in the river that you pass by as you walk into the city. During one of the many floods in the city's history, the mills were washed away.
We took a nice walking tour of the city, and had a good lunch, but that was really just to burn daylight until the time for our tour of the Cathedral Mosque.
Until you step inside.
Then you see the columns, the archways, and the open spaces that were used as a mosque until about 1486.
You might notice that ever pillar in this part of the building is different. That is because they were all salvaged from Roman ruins and reused. If you look closely, you can see that since these pillars were all different heights, some had to be shimmed up, and some had to be buried below the floor level.
Amazing.
The extent of this building is amazing.
It is so big that the Catholic Kings decided not to tear it down, but instead they built their cathedral INSIDE the mosque.
You have to see it to believe it.
After the tour, we wandered about Córdoba for a while.
We were told this alleyway was the narrowest in all of Spain.
This is a good view of the Cathedral Mosque from a distance.
And that is us, standing by the Guadalquivir River.
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