Córdoba

One weekend, my group took an excursion to Córdoba. I'd read a bit about its famous Mezquita in art history classes, and I know I had definitely seen countless photos of it in other history classes, so I was really excited to go see everything for myself. 

In order to get to the main part of the city, we crossed a really old bridge and went through this old arch. Then we walked up its main street by the Mezquita, which is now a church.

Original ceiling panels preserved outside of the mosque in the garden area.

The Mezquita/church has all the traditional elements of a mosque. However, when the Christian Kings conquered and turned it into a church, they added a bunch of Christian architectural elements, like a campanile (tower). 

The cathedral is a exemplary of the Mudéjar style, mixing elements of visigothic, islamic, and roman architecture.  

I was absolutely blown away when I walked into the cathedral. The arches, inspired by the roman arches, yet decorated with the usual islamic patterns, were perfectly preserved. Even mosaic floors from visigothic times were visible beneath glass panels on the floor. 

All of the columns alternate between black and red marble, and each column has the signature stamp of the person who worked on it.

One of the most beautiful parts of the building was the stained glass. 

All of the old ceilings has been kept up, especially these byzantine gems.  All the wood ceilings were recently restored (the originals above are outside of the building). 

Since the mosque had been converted into a cathedral, there's a huge church kind of plopped in the center of the original mosque. There's a huge architectural difference between areas where the mudéjar components become renaissance. Then the differences between renaissance and gothic architecture are played up in the ceilings. 

Any church has its treasury. This one wasn't as full of goods as the one in Sevilla, but they still had some cool things, like the sacrament thing-bob here.

Along the whole mosque, there are chapels on the sides, and there are other christian elements visible among the old components.

After going to the mezquita, we took a trip to the old synagog that happened to not be destroyed, although there is a cross on the wall from when Christians made it a church. The Jewish population of Córdoba paid Muslim designers/builders to construct the synagog, so it has the same mudéjar architectural style.

Outside the synagog, there's a statue of a great Jewish thinker from la convivencia, whose name I forget, who was friends with Averroes, from Borges' La busca de Averroes, whose statue I couldn't find. :( (Ignore that run on, please..) People rub his shoe for good luck, so it's really shiny. 

After the synagog, some of us went to Córdoba's Reales Alcázares, that were, as Rick Steves says, a bit "overrated,"although I did think they were still worth a visit.

On the way we walked along the river, and there were really cool ruins still there as well as this old water wheel.

What was cool about the old fortress was that you could see the whole city from the towers. 

The fortress dates back to the visigoths, and it was given to Fernando and Isabella during the Inquisition. It has a bunch of catholic details throughout as well as ancient roman and muslim (the baths). The ponds had fish in them, which makes me really happy for some reason, probably because my grandma had fishponds in her old garden in Texas. It's nostalgic.

We left the gardens and found a restaurant that Rick Steves recommended, and it was fantastic. The specialty of Córdoba is salmorejo (think a thicker version of gazpacho - it has bread and more garlic mixed in), but I had pisto (a specialty of this particular restaurant), which is kind of like ratatouille and is my favorite spanish dish.  

After lunch, we walked around a bit, exploring some of the shops where you could find silver (something Córdoba is well-known for), then we hopped on the bus to go back home. :)