Day 27: Cordoba

March 16, 2025

Heart

Comment

The tourist information map lists 72 things to see in Cordoba, while GPSMyCity restricts itself to a humble 24. The 24 are made up of 5 Ancient Roman sites, 10 sites in the Jewish quarter, and 9 general ones. Of the 9, 5 are "must sees". The first "must see" is the Mezquita Mosque-Cathedral. And folks, that is not only a must see and a rather mundane UNESCO World Heritage Site but also a "Site of Outstanding Universal Value". In UNESCO terms that is something of "cultural and/or natural significance which is so exceptional as to transcend national boundaries and to be of common importance for present and future generations of all humanity." For this thing, even that is a bit of an understatement.

The mosque-cathedral started in the mid sixth century as the Basilica of San Vincente. The original mosque in the site was started in the eighth century, and successively enlarged until the tenth century. In the thirteenth century Cordoba was conquered by the Christians. Chapels and transepts and such were added, until the seventeenth century.

The result is a mixture of Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, and Caliphate architecture with Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque art. In short, it's all in there, and it's quite mind boggling.

The mosque-cathedral is quite huge, with a ground plan of 180 by 130 meters. That makes it about like St Peter's Basilica in Rome. Surprisingly, it does not seem to rate, among mosques of the world, being just 1/16 the size of the Prophet's Mosque in Medina. But it was big enough for us. The roof is supported by a forest of pillars made of granite, jasper, and many-coloured marbles. Some 850 pillars divide the interior into 19 north-to-south and 29 east-to-west aisles, with each row of pillars supporting tiers of open horseshoe arches.

The arches make up the main brilliant bit of the Moorish design, and they are the thing you will see featured on all the postcards. When we were here last year, I spotted arches that had had Christian frescoes painted on them, and while beautiful, I had thought of these of something of a desecration. I wanted to look at that again this time, but could not spot it. Dodie was for walking each of the 19 (or 29) aisles looking for this, but in the end we ran out of strength or resolve. When you think of the 72 or 24 or even 5 important things to see in this one day, some kind of restraint is probably in order.

Something about the arches is that every time you look through or around them, there is a different pattern to perceive. So you could take hundreds of photos of just this feature, and they would be all different, and one just as beautiful as the next.

I didn't take hundreds of photos of this, but I did take quite a few. Here is a selection:

Woven among the arch designs are the Christian architectural or art bits. Like this:

Dodie pointed out that a Christian bit is easy to distinguish if it depicts people or animals, something that the Muslims do not do. They stick to geometrics or flowers.

A huge amount of work is going into maintaining and restoring the building and its contents. The "Cathedral Chapter" describes the organization that runs the site. Since 1236 they have worked on its preservation, and also have held a religious service every day since then. Inside the building are many examples of archeological work from the past, and also panels describing the restoration of parts of various side chapels:

Display cases with old bits of the building

This is a representation of San Rafael, from 1768. Note the Coquilles St Jacques.

The display does not say what this gizmo was.

The escapement part of the works suggests a clock. Maybe it controlled ringing of bells?

Look how degraded this figure in a side chapel had been.

Beautiful design elements could also be found outside the building, like on this wall:

Restoration is also ongoing outside. Look at the left and right sides of this photo. It's amazing that restoration could be so good. But obviously not every restoration project has been attempted yet.

Now that we are outside the mosque, we can head down to the river and the Roman Bridge. At the bridge, on the mosque side, is an arched Roman Gate, and on the other side is the fortified Calahorra Tower. Hordes of tourists walk back and forth between these two at all times. The bridge, by the way, was part of the Roman Via Augusta, joining Rome to Cadiz.

The Gate of the Bridge. This existed at the time of Julius Caesar, and has had various names. It was the main gate to the city. In 1928 it was rebuilt as a free standing memorial gate.

Slightly down river is one of several Moorish water wheels, used a part of an irrigation system.

Walking across the bridge in the direction of the mosque.

There were several cats by the base of the wheel.

Near the wheel is the palace of the Christian monarchs - Ferdinand and Isabella. They used it in their Spanish Inquisition, and in 1486 Christopher Columbus was here, looking for support for his expedition.

With all this to see, we declined to go into the Alcazar. You can see the "You are Here (Aqui)" and the Alcazar at the bottom of the map.

Scott had referred to the four foot wide streets of the old town. The narrowest I could pace off was six feet, but yes, there are some very picturesque narrow streets! The streets may be narrow, but they conceal open spaces within the bordering buildings that are known here as "patios". Many people/families lived in the buildings, and had access to the patio space. In recent years people took to decorating the patios with plantings, and there are annual competitions for the best patios. The patio owners invite the public in to see them, and usually have little gift shops in some of the rooms. Here is a selection of streets and patios:

Coca cola sign, could not be older than about 1888.

This paso image was on one of the walls in the street.

In the little gift shop of one patio. The "As Told to Children" books are our favourites, but only if we think we have room to carry them.

The owner gave a rapid fire multilingual description of her patio.

Demonstrating the can on a pole she uses to water the pots.

In her giftshop, her son-in-law makes jewelry from fine wire - filigree!

Dodie gets a demo about the filigree wire. You can see our documentary crew in the mirror!

This the king and queen of Spain, visiting the shop.

A sculpture in the street depicts making of a patio.

An enigmatic Moor pops out of the bushes.

Our next stop was the Jewish quarter. This is not to say that you can find even one Jew there, let alone a bagel. No, they were all given the boot in 1492.

You can find lots of Jewish symbol souvenirs in shops here, but they are merely the transcriptions of familiar logos onto traditional pottery designs, not genuine in any sense. You can also get these plates with Chinese characters.

You can however stay in a hotel like this.

The hotel seems to take its logo from this section of wall. The hotel must be in a previous palace and this is the logo of the palace people.

My brother had suggested we could look for Hamantaschen in the Jewish quarter, this being Purim, the Jewish holiday that features these triangular pastries. We are here about 500 years too late to find Hamantaschen, but we did find churros! Churros with thick hot chocolate can power you to complete a walking tour!

We are in the Jewish Quarter now:

The Jewish heritage here, though 500 years dead, remains a good tourist draw. Here, there is a statue of famous Jewish philosopher Maimonides, and it is crowded with tourists.

The rabbi Maimonides was born in 1138 in Cordoba.

This symbol on the wall is from some sort of association of Spanish Jewish quarters.

Like the Maimonides statue, the synagogue is popular with tourists, and there is often a line to get in. We could easily have missed it because of the crowd, but we didn't see much of the usual synagogue stuff, like especially the closet containing torah scrolls.

The interior synagogue walls seem rather moorish - understandable, the peoples are all from the same area.

We would need a Hebrew scholar to decipher this.

Here at least is one artifact in the right place.

In order to reach our next target, we had to leave the old city, exiting by the Almodovar Gate.

Oh my, the modern city is a shock. Hate the traffic and the buildings.

This market is not really a market but rather a food fair.

These boards of 4 tapas for 12 euros seem rather pricey.

This is our guy! He had tagine and other great stuff.

The East Indian family beside Dodie were from Texas. They agreed this was great stuff, but kept checking with the man that what they were ordering had no meat.

Dodie and the lady communed well on how good the stuff looked.

We got this. I drove Dodie a little crazy by asking and asking what spices I was tasting. Cinnamon, anise, honey were in there, at least. One juice is maracuja (passion?) and the other is pina (pineapple).

I was a little sorry not to go for pizza, like this.

We dragged ourselves back, to the city wall.

Of course, I was still looking for "dessert", and we found this:

As the sign says, Nata really is Portuguese, and the package we got our in said Made in Portugal, but these must have been made here.

Another shop down the street had a wonderful selection of baklava, turkish delight, and nougat rolls. These were unique and looked wonderful. But we already had our nata. I said to Dodie about the shop "If we lived here..." and she completed the thought "You would weigh 250 pounds!" Correct!

More baklava than I have ever seen in one place!

Now as we walked back to our hotel by the mosque, lots of people were out and previously quiet streets were bustling.

The bell tower of the cathedral shows that we are almost back.

We had walked 12 km, over 7 hours, and seen over 20 sites, without getting too overtired. Dear reader, do you feel tired after finally getting to the end of this story? If not, go back and give some of those great photos a "like".

Or how about this, I went back to last year and found those frescoed arches:

This has been there since 1583, but we could not find it today.

Today's ride: 12 km (7 miles)
Total: 846 km (525 miles)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	12
Comment on this entry	Comment	0