Author: Intergalactic Tourist

The trip from Córdoba to Granada was generally uneventful, but had its noteworthy moments nonetheless. En route to Granada we passed through a district of the province of Andalusia known as la Subbética, which as far as I know includes no major cities or major tourist attractions other than the Sierras Subbéticas Natural Park, which we were not fortunate enough to visit, but which is home to a wide diversity of plants and animals, and a stronghold of the peregrine falcon. Our encounter with la Subbética was limited mainly to a rest stop on the N-432 highway at Nicol’s Restaurant, near the town of Luque. However, this proved to be of great interest to me as a showcase, as it were, of small-town Spanish life. The closest analogy I can think of is a roadside cafe in Midwestern America. But this was an area primarily devoted to the cultivation of olive trees and the production of olive oil, and Nicol’s was a market for that commodity as much or more than a roadside diner.

The olive groves and factory where the oil was produced were close behind the restaurant. Between the roadhouse and the olive groves there was a parklike area suitable for strolling, relaxing and picnicking according the needs of the moment. Although there was no railroad line, there were two railroad cars in back of the establishment, which puzzled me until I figured out that they provided the refrigerator for the business. Judging from the remains of an old horse trough, stone benches and other antique artifacts adorning the site. this place must have functioned as a travelers’ stop from time immemorial.

Resuming our journey, we continued across the rolling Andalusia countryside with its endless olive groves. Racing the oncoming twilight, we were able to catch late-afternoon views of picturesque towns and castles such as Castro del Rio and its hilltop fortress, until the curtain of darkness ended the show.

The mihrab, the holiest place in a Muslim mosque, is ordinarily a semicircular niche in a wall indicating the qibla, the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca towards which Muslims face when praying. The wall on which a mihrab appears is therefore known as the ‘qibla wall’. The mihrab in the Mezquita is an exception to the usual pattern in that it is a small room behind a lavishly decorated door. The caliphs also added a maqsura, a screened-off prayer space in front of the mihrab, reserved for the ruler, intended to ensure his privacy and protect him from assassination.

The Castilians of the Reconquista era unaccountably felt no obligation to pray to Mecca, and they had insufficient appreciation of the esthetic value of the mihrab as well. In the 14th century they converted it into the chapel of Saint Peter, where the consecrated host was stored before the completion of the new Capilla Mayor in the 17th century.

In the 19th century, however, the Spanish began to rediscover the cultural heritage left by the Moors, and restoration work began on the mihrab and maqsura that has continued to the present; so visitors are now able to see it in its full glory.

The mihrab is located at the south wall of the Mezquita just to the west of the Chapel of St. Teresa. On either side of it are two doors. The door on the left (facing the wall) of the mihrab, called the Bab Bayt al-Mal, led to the mosque treasury, which of course is now the cathedral treasury. The one on the right, the Bab al-Sabat, led to a passage (sabat) connecting the mosque to the caliph’s palace. The mihrab and the doors are lavishly decorated with mosaics and inscriptions from the Quran. The maqsura encloses the area in front of the doors in a set of intricate polylobed interlocking arches, which also serve to bear the weight of the three domes covering this space. No words can possibly convey the esthetic impact of viewing this astounding ensemble, which must be viewed in person to be fully appreciated. The pictures shown here can convey only a pale shadow of the reality. It was the culmination of our visit to the Mezquita and to the fabulous city of Córdoba.

Before leaving the Mezquita, I want to present a few glimpses of some of the detail-work of the walls and arches that has perhaps been neglected elsewhere. These serve as a reminder of the capabilities of the Moorish and Mudéjar craftsmen who built the mosque and continued its maintenance and transformation after the Christians took over, up until they were expelled from Spain in the 16th and 17th centuries.

We exited the Mezquita as we had entered, via the Patio de los Naranjos. As we emerged I caught sight of a young couple making out on the patio, and took a quick shot of them; the muchacho, probably an American, took a shot right back at me with his phone camera.

On our way out of the Patio de los Naranjos, Sandie took four superb photos of the Mezquita’s magnificent Campanario (Bell Tower). This began as a minaret, completed in 958 under the auspices of Abd al-Rahman III, the first Caliph. Although the Christians converted it into a bell tower after the Reconquista of 1236, they made few substantial changes at first, other than to put a cross on top. But in 1589 the tower was badly damaged in a storm, and rather than merely repairing the damage, the authorities decided to redo it in Renaissance style. They entrusted the work to Hernán Ruiz III, the latest member of the dynasty who had begun the new Capilla Mayor. The Ruiz family seem to have been singularly unlucky in completing their projects, since Hernán III, impeded by the neglect of his sponsors to fund his work, died in 1606, leaving it unfinished. The reconstruction was completed under another architect in 1617. But even that was not final; serious flaws in the construction, and further extensive damage storms and earthquakes, ensured that major modifications would continue throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. One significant enhancement, in 1664, involved the placement of a new cupola on top, crowned by a statue of Saint Raphael.

From the Mezquita, we embarked on the final phase of our visit to the wondrous city of Córdoba – an exploration of the Old Quarter. For that, a new post is in order.

The Mezquita of Córdoba contains a traditional cruciform cathedral inside a Muslim mosque. How that came to be is a story worth telling.

By 1523 Carlos I was both King of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor as Charles V. The Bishop of Córdoba (and later Inquisitor General as well as Cardinal), Alonso Manrique de Lara, wanted to build a new cathedral in Renaissance style. The Córdoba city council vehemently opposed this idea. The bishop appealed to Charles V, who, being a devout Catholic, gave him the go-ahead. Later, upon seeing the (unfinished) result in 1526, Charles V is supposed to have said something like “You have built what you or anyone else might have built anywhere; to do so you have destroyed something that was unique in the world.” I very much doubt whether Charles V said anything of the sort; he was responsible for demolishing a Moorish palace in the Alhambra in order to build a Renaissance residence for himself, so it seems unlikely that the Córdoba project vexed his esthetic sensibilities. But somebody said something like it, and I agree: the cathedral, occupying the central section of the mosque, is a worthy endeavor, considered one of the best in Spain, but one can see similar achievements in Seville or Burgos, and I would rather have seen the Mezquita in its pre-1523 state. In any case Charles V did not see the final result, since it was not completed in his lifetime.

On the other hand, it has been observed that had the cathedral not been built inside the mosque, as opposed to another location in the city, the mosque might not have survived at all; making it a Christian holy place ensured its sanctity.

In any case, the architect chosen to design the cathedral, Hernán Ruiz, fortunately had a high regard for Moorish architecture and displayed considerable sensitivity in preserving as much of the mosque as possible while fulfilling the prescriptions of the sponsors. He started the construction of the nave, but died in 1547, leaving his son, also named Hernán Ruiz, to continue his work. Hernán Ruiz II built the walls of the transept, but he died in 1569, leaving the project still unfinished, and it was then entrusted to Juan de Ochoa, who completed the ceilings of the nave and transept in 1607. But even this was not the end result; the Capilla Mayor still needed an altarpiece, which was begun in 1618, and finished in 1653. During this prolonged period of construction, artistic fashions evolved considerably, so that the cathedral incorporated several different architectural styles – Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque.

As a consequence of all these changes, the number of columns in the Mezquita was reduced from 1250 to a mere 856.

The cruciform cathedral has four main sections: the Capilla Mayor, which contains the High Altar; the Choir; the Transept, which forms the arms of the cross and contains the Crucero, or Crossing, separating the Capilla Mayor from the Choir; and the Trascoro, or retro-choir, a space at the back of the choir for the clergy and altar-ministrants to assemble.

We first encountered the cathedral by way of the Trascoro. The wall separating it from the choir is decorated with a set of columns framing two doors presumably connecting to the choir, presided over by a relief nestled in an upper alcove depicting St. Peter seated in a chair at the heavenly gates.

The orientation of Ruiz father and son was primarily Gothic, and this is reflected in the high vaults and walls of the cathedral. But it was Ochoa who completed the choir ceiling and the dome over the transept, and he was a Mannerist. I won’t attempt to explain Mannerism here, but in short, it was an outgrowth of Renaissance styles characterized by elongated proportions, highly stylized poses, and lack of clear perspective. To me, Ochoa’s ceilings appear simply as Renaissance art.

Yet the final appearance of the choir section is neither Gothic nor Renaissance, because it was only finished in the 1750s, when the Baroque sculptor Pedro Duque Cornejo installed 53 intricately decorated choir stalls which he had carved in mahogany wood. The west end of the choir is dominated by an episcopal throne, also by Duque Cornejo, dated 1752, and designed like an altarpiece, with three aisles and a depiction of the Ascension of Christ into heaven on the upper vault, topped off by a statue of the archangel Rafael.

The altarpiece of the Capilla Mayor, begun in 1618, was not finished until 1653, and even then changes were made later. A Jesuit, Alonso de Matias, designed it in the Mannerist style, structuring it in three aisles separated by dual composite capital columns, and two levels above the base. Occupying the central bay of the altarpiece is a towering splendid Tabernacle, which displays the consecrated Host. Directly above the tabernacle is a painting of the Assumption of Mary, while the side bays are filled with canvases featuring martyrs of the Church, all by Antonio Palomino, a court painter from Madrid. Palomino received his commission for these paintings in 1713, when Europe was already well into the Baroque era, and they replaced originals which were also Baroque in style.

Just outside the Capilla Mayor, on either side of the transept, are two imposing Baroque pulpits carved in black marble, mahogany and bronze by a French sculptor, Michel Verdiguier, who completed them in 1779. They are dedicated to the writers of the Gospels: the one on the right, to Matthew and Mark, the one on the left to Luke and John.

Every proper cathedral has to have a sacristy or treasury, and the one in the Mezquita is located on its south side, in the Capilla de Santa Theresa, where we headed after viewing the Capilla Mayor. The Chapel of Saint Teresa was a late addition, having been founded in 1697 by the Bishop of Córdoba at the time, Cardinal Pedro de Salazar. He was a devotee of St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), the great Spanish mystic and religious reformer, and patron saint of those who suffer from headaches. Salazar intended it to be a funerary chapel for himself and his family, as well as a sacristy, and he is indeed buried there. He located the chapel, appropriately, in the same place where the treasury of the mosque had been centuries before.

The most striking of the many sacred objects displayed in the Treasury is the Processional Custody of Corpus Christi. This is a gold and silver monstrance, a container where the consecrated Host is displayed for veneration during ceremonial processions. It was the creation of two artists, one of whom, Enrique de Arfe (1475-1545), was of German origin (birth name Heinrich von Harff), but apparently worked all his professional life in Castile. He is credited with introducing Renaissance innovations in precious metalworking to Spain. In the seventeenth century the Spanish silversmith Bernabé García de los Reyes augmented Arfe’s work with a new base and other additions, completing the monstrance in its present form.

A number of other historically significant and precious gold and silver sacred objects were on display – processional crosses, reliquaries, scepters, etc. No less imposing were the paintings and sculptures in the Treasury. Almost all of them are products of the Baroque era, late 17th and early 18th century. There are eight statues of saints and church fathers by the celebrated sculptor José de Mora Exposito of Granada, placed between the arches of the chapel. And of course there had to be a sculpture of Saint Teresa of Avila, also by de Mora, which presides over the altarpiece of the chapel. I don’t have a photo of it, but a better one than I could have obtained may be seen here. She is depicted holding a book with a dove on her shoulder.

Two famous but anonymous paintings, located over the chapel doors, represent The Immaculate Conception and The Assumption of Mary. But I was more drawn to three canvases by Antonio Palomino illustrating scenes from the history of the city of Córdoba: The Martyrdom of Saint Acisclus and Saint Victoria, The appearance of Saint Raphael before Father Roelas, and The conquest of Cordoba by Fernando III the Saint. The last of these is the only one associated with a verifiable historical episode: it depicts the triumphant entrance of King Ferdinand (Fernando) III into Córdoba in 1536. We did not photograph it, but you may see it here. The other two deal with episodes which I would describe as legendary, but which Córdobans certainly believed to be true. The Appearance of St. Raphael to Father Roelas is the last of several occurrences in which the guardian angel of Córdoba is supposed to have revealed himself to local clerics to announce his divine appointment as custodian of the city. The Martyrdom canvas depicts an episode from 304 CE, during the persecutions of Diocletian, in which the Roman prefect of Córdoba had the youth Acisclus and his sister Victoria tortured and killed for refusing to abjure their Christian faith. They were later made patron saints of the city.

Before leaving the Treasury, I want to show a few items we observed there which were of less exalted character than the sacred objects pictured above, but which we found intriguing for one reason or another. I have not been able to find out much about these more mundane pieces, but they are worth presenting nonetheless.

The Treasury is situated next to the Mihrab, which I’ll deal with in the next post, where I conclude our visit to the Mezquita.

Leaving the Mezquita, we immersed ourselves in the narrow streets of the Judería, the old Jewish quarter of Córdoba, and arrived in front of a building which proclaimed itself to be the Faculty of Philology and Letters of the University of Córdoba. It’s difficult to know where the demarcation between the Judería and the rest of Córdoba lies, since for about 500 years no Jews lived there, and few live there today. In any case, there are many establishments in the Judería that have no obvious Jewish associations, such as the University of Córdoba. But it was a quiet and welcoming place to begin our tour of the Judería, as the black cat sleeping beneath a nearby tree confirmed.

It was only a short distance from the University to the Plaza Maimonides. This square, of course, is named after the medieval Jewish scholar and physician Moses ben Maimon, generally known as Maimonides, who was born in Córdoba in 1138. He did not live there long, but there is a monument to him in the square. In 1148 the Almoravids, the Berber dynasty which had ruled al-Andalus for a century, were replaced by a less tolerant regime, that of the Almohads, who demanded that all Christians and Jews in Córdoba either convert to Islam or emigrate. The family of Maimonides emigrated – first to the city of Fez in Morocco, then to Palestine and finally Egypt. He was trained as a physician and eventually became the court physician to the Islamic ruler Saladin. In the meantime he also became the leader of the Jewish community in Egypt and completed a series of writings which established him as the pre-eminent Jewish scholar and philosopher of the Middle Ages. It’s not surprising that Córdoba would want to claim him as a native son.

Plaza Maimonides is filled with attractive houses, which made it worth a look regardless of its illustrious past associations. In addition to the statue of Maimonides, there is a bust of Muhammad ibn Aslam Al-Ghafiqi (died 1165), an Andalusian-Arab physician and oculist who is credited with the invention of eyeglasses (still called gafas in Spanish).

You wouldn’t expect a Jewish neighborhood to host a bullfighting museum. But that’s where we found the Museo Taurino de Córdoba- in an elegant mansion owned by aristocrats in the 16th century. We also found the Iglesia San Bartolomé. In the year 1391, a huge anti-Jewish pogrom broke out which decimated Jewish communities all over Spain, not least in Córdoba. Many Jews converted to Christianity or emigrated. In the aftermath, with many Jewish houses vacated, a new Christian parish church was established in the Judería on Calle Averroes. It is considered one of the finest examples of Mudéjar art in Spain. Unfortunately, it was closed when we were there, so we were only able to take pictures of the exterior, but a stunning photo of the interior can be found here.

Near the Plaza Maimonides we were ushered into a handsome two-story apartment complex, both stories fronted with arcades formed by elegant arches, surrounding a spacious courtyard paved with river-stone, dotted with trees and shrubs ensconced in graceful planters fashioned from brick-and-wrought iron, and graced with an exquisite fountain near the entry passage. Blue flowerpots, reflecting the Jewish heritage of the location, hung from the railings between the second-floor arches. The complex seemed to epitomize the life-style not only of the old Judería, but of medieval – and modern – Andalusia in general. We should all be so lucky.

The Córdoba Judería incorporates not only residential districts but also part of the downtown area of the city, and we soon found ourselves making our way down a busy street bedecked with hotels, bars, restaurants, boutiques and, of all things, the Museum of the Inquisition. Having been a familiar of the Spanish Inquisition in my salad days, I was anxious to get a look at it, although we did not have time to explore it at length.

Almost before we knew it, we found ourselves back at the Plaza de San Rafael, boarding the bus to continue on to Granada. I regretted having so little time to explore the city which was for many years the supreme jewel of Spain, but I was also thrilled to have beheld it once in my lifetime.

The Mezquita-Catedral de Córdoba – Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba – formally titled the Catedral de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción (Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption), but commonly just called the Mezquita, is one of the wonders of the world. I had wanted to see it for many years, ever since I saw a photo of the interior in a book of European history, and would not have gone on a trip that didn’t have it on the itinerary.

At the northeast corner of the Plaza de San Rafael, we saw what looked like an upscale apartment building with balconies overlooking the street. It turned out that these balconies were built into the south wall of the Mezquita in the 18th century to improve the illumination inside the walls. They do not provide entry to the Mezquita; for that we had to walk to the north end, along the Calle Torrijos, to the Patio de los Naranjos, the Courtyard of the Orange Trees. Confusingly, one enters the mosque through what is called the “south wall,” i.e. the south wall of the Patio, which is actually the north wall of the mosque. It is lined with 17 horseshoe arches which formerly provided access to the mosque, but nowadays only one of them, the Gate of the Palms (Puerta de las Palmas), is open.

Crossing the threshold of the Puerta de las Palmas, the visitor is transported back to another age, the world of medieval Islam. It was Abd al-Rahman I, founder of the Emirate of Córdoba, who initiated construction of the Mezquita in 785 CE. His successors expanded and enhanced the mosque, and later, when the Christians took over, they left it essentially intact. When they did start making their own additions, they did so in Mudéjar style (at first), so that the visitor’s initial impression is that of an overwhelmingly Moorish ambience with a few Christian accoutrements.

Proceeding down the length of the vast entrance hall, which runs all the way to the south end, one encounters a glass floor through which are visible excavations of Roman ruins – on top of which the Mezquita was built. Turning to the right or left, visitors find themselves, as we did, in one of the several prayer halls, all of which are so expansive and so similar that you cannot keep track of which one you are in at the moment.

The founding builders of the Mezquita – the architect is unknown – made extensive use of material from those Roman ruins, especially columns, but the columns were not tall enough to build the ceiling of the prayer hall to the height deemed proper, so the Muslim engineers made up the difference by adding not only column extensions but arches in multiple tiers. The effect is astounding. Row upon row, tier upon tier, a forest of columns stretches off into what seems like infinity.

The first Christian addition, as one might expect, was an altar; in Spanish churches the altar is enclosed in a space called the Capilla Mayor, or main chapel. The original Capilla Mayor, now known as the Capilla Villaviciosa, was created between 1357 and 1372 by appropriating a space under a dome in the mosque extension added by Caliph al-Hakam II in the 10th century. The artisans who built the altar made few if any architectural changes to accommodate it. A Gothic nave was added later, in 1489, and much later a Baroque altarpiece and other furnishings, but these did not encroach on the splendid 10th-century dome or the incredible interlacing archwork at the chapel entrance; and they were removed in 20th-century restoration work. The Villaviciosa Chapel continued to serve as the Capilla Mayor until 1607, when the new Capilla Mayor was completed.

A more substantial modification to the mosque came with the construction of the Capilla Real, the Royal Chapel, completed in 1371. This was done under none other than Henry (Enrique) II, murderer of Peter the Cruel and persecutor of the Jews, who intended it as a funerary chapel and transferred to it the remains of his father, Alfonso XI, and grandfather, Ferdinand IV. Those remains are no longer there, but the chapel is still known as the Capilla Real. Despite its Christian sponsorship, the Capilla Real was constructed in Mudéjar style by Moorish craftsmen. The Spanish Christians of the Reconquista era remained heavily under the spell of Moorish art and architecture and needed the skills of its practitioners to emulate them.

But this did not last. In the fifteenth century the successes of the Reconquista fueled a growing self-confidence, cultural identity and religious fervor in the Iberian kingdoms, manifested in the conquest of the last remaining Muslim strongholds, the final expulsion of the Jews, and the Voyages of Discovery. This was accompanied by increased integration into the European political and economic sphere and, most notably, exposure to the influences of the Italian Renaissance.

In the sixteenth century the consequences of these changes would come into full force. I’ll deal with that in the next post.