Córdoba

A Narrow Street

is most famous for its Mosque, La Mesquita (otherwise known as the Cathedral of St Mary of the Assumption). That is what we went to see. Less than two hours north from Malaga on a nice highway, it's easy to get to. Also, if you arrive in town after 2 pm on Saturday and wear your lucky shirt parking on the streets is free. Or, if you get to town around 8.30 am, the entrance to several of the town's museums is free for the first hour (according to the town's official tourism site).

We chose the first option mentioned here. Walked around the wide palm lined boulevards and narrow white housed streets, making our way to Mesquita. It turned out to be a very long yellowish building. On aerial photos you could see it as a rectangle, stretching several blocks where about 1/3 of the rectangle is taken up by the evergreen courtyard. Those are orange trees planted in rows.

Inside the mosque-cathedral are rows and rows of columns of granite, marble, jasper, and onyx. It all started with those columns, salvaged or taken from old Roman temples when the construction started on the 8 ^th century. Throughout the centuries, Mesquita grew, with each new ruler adding on to the older part, not to be outdone by the size of the expansion, and sometimes demolishing parts of the old (as when they built the cathedral in the 16^th century).

Striped Arches of Mesquita

By now there are what must be 30-some chapels, each one of them elaborate and lavish, lining the four walls of the monster structure. There's the mihrab (the niche indicating the direction of the Mecca) tucked away somewhere among the chapels, and an exquisite choir and chancel in the very middle of the building.

Main Chapel of Cathedral

The cathedral has a marble altarpiece, and mahogany pulpits and choir stalls; it is supposed to include Gothic, Baroque, and Renaissance elements.

What is interesting is that before the work started on the first mosque, the site had a basilica on it and it was used by both Christians and Muslims. Then, for centuries, it was used for Islamic worship, then, from 1236, for Christian. At the beginning of this century the local Muslims asked to hold their own services in the Mesquita but they have been turned down.