COR’-do-ba

So who knew? All these years I thought it was Cor-DO’-ba.  Now you know.  Today we were off for Seville, by way of Cordoba and its famed Mezquita mosque-cathedral.  More on that hyphenation later.  We had our usual buffet breakfast at the hotel and boarded the bus to loosely follow the path described in Don Quixote.  Plenty of classic old windmills along the way, but I never saw a one of them turning.  Guess they are just static displays these days.

Another sight we saw often were the “Osbornes.”  Say, what?

There are some 90 or so of these giant metal bull silhouettes scattered along the roadways of Spain.  They are the remnants of a long-abandoned advertising campaign of the Osborne Sherry Company.  When they were ads, they had red company logos painted on them.  After the Europe-wide campaign to eliminate roadside signage, the company was going to remove them, but the resulting hue and cry by the public resulted in their remaining.  The silhouette is today superimposed on the Spanish flag by partisans of various sports teams when they support their heroes.  Supposedly, there are a couple of these in Mexico as well.  Anyway, we saw a couple of dozen in our travels, the bus erupting with “OSBORNE” upon sighting.  We were easily entertained.

Enroute to Cordoba, the bus made a pit stop in the tiny town of  Puerto Lapice, famed for nothing whatsoever except a smallish gift shop that offered travelers a free bathroom.  I don’t know that anyone bought anything, but the stop was much appreciated.  This is where I shot the windmills. Loni posed in front of the small church.  There was nothing else picturesque.

Cordoba was the Roman and Moorish capital of the Iberian Peninsula.  The Romans arrived in about 200 BC, and were ousted by the Visigoths around AD 600.  They built a church on the site of the Mezquita, but didn’t last long, falling to the Moors in the 700’s.  Emirs and Caliphs held court here until the early 11th century, with Christians, Jews, and Moors living in civilized harmony.  At that time, Cordoba was one of the greatest centers of art, culture, and learning in the Western world; just one of its libraries held a staggering 400,000 volumes.  Factional squabbling broke up the Caliphate in 1009, and the weakened smaller kingdoms were conquered by King Ferdinand in 1236.  All this background is necessary to understand the pictures.

Cordoba lies along Guadalquivir River, which is crossed by a bridge that still has Roman underpinnings, although it has been rebuilt and added onto over the centuries.

On to the Mezquita, a truly bizarre collision of religions.  When the Moors took over, they destroyed the Visigoth church and used its pieces to help construct the mosque.  When the Christians took over, they repurposed the place (ca 1236) as their church, but largely left the structure alone.  For a while.  Along comes Carlos V, who in the 1520’s sanctioned the construction of a baroque cathedral to be built within.  His idiot architects retained the outer portions of the mosque, but gutted the fabulous center, and built  their mediocre cathedral in the shell of the mosque.  To his credit, Carlos decried the sacrilege when he saw it, denigrating the builders:  “To build something ordinary, you have destroyed something that was unique in the world.”  Too little, too late, methinks.

The first thing you see from the outside is the bell tower, which completely encloses (and uses for structural support) the mosque’s minaret.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The exterior of the Mezquita is formed by high walls that are rather plain.  They enclose the mosque structure as well as courtyards, once filled with palms, and now with orange trees.

The dazzlement, of course, lies within.  This is the entry hallway.

It can only begin to prepare you for the forest of the mosque’s arches that surround the church.  The highlighted arch way down the center is where the cathedral begins.  There are 850 of these pillars, many crowned by ornate capitols taken from the Visigoth church.  The ceiling above the arches is carved cedar. 

In the mid-800’s, the mosque held an original copy of the Koran and an alleged arm bone of the prophet, and was a pilgrimage site second only to Mecca. The Moorish architecture is exquisite.

As we approach the beginnings of the cathedral, things become a bit less elegant.  Not less ornate, mind you, but less elegant, more cluttered and haphazard.

And awkwardly out of place, to my eye.

At left, below, are the vaulted ceilings of the cathedral, and its organ.  To the right is the main alter area.  Sorry, I think it’s a hideous mishmosh.  YMMV.  The brochure that we got with our entrance fee is, of course, a Catholic publication.  It describes these things thusly:  The result was . . . an ingenious integration of the caliph structures within the gothic, renaissance, and baroque creators.  Ah, yes, spin doctoring is alive and well.

One area of the cathedral is known as the “Treasury,” where various icons and such are stored.  One of these is Corpus Christi monstrance that is still used in modern-day processions through the city to show the devotion of the people.  I’ll bet they walk v-e-r-y carefully.

There actually are two monstrances in this photo.  If you look at the left, you will see a Chinese lady holding up her laptop to take pictures.  You will also note that she’s in my picture, despite my having waited for EONS for her to move on.  She’s the wife of the shoemaker that I mentioned in an earlier post.  She is utterly clueless that anyone else might like to take a shot or actually see something close up.  Throughout the entire trip she was the bane of all photography.  Always in the shot;  always holding up that computer to block your view of anything;  always standing right next to items or interest or someone demonstrating something, so that no one could see.  She was the blockage that wouldn’t die!  Loni will rag on me to delete the foregoing, but I wanted to strangle this otherwise pleasant woman on numerous occasions.  And, Loni will have to admit that even she had to ask her to move out of the way during a demonstration of craftmanship at a porcelain factory.

Anyway, the Mezquita was stunning, and a must-see on any “greatest hits” tour of Spain.  We exited the walls, and promptly encountered the gypsy women and their offspring begging shamelessly just outside the exits.  Mournful pleas of “for the babeee,” held in one arm while the other was outstretched palm up, were everywhere.  We had been forewarned by our local guide that (a) the babies were believed to be drugged to make them look passive and sick, and (b) they had been followed “after hours” and seen getting into newer Mercedes sedans to make their way home.  Total scam.  I did feel sorry for the babies, but paying the mothers would only perpetuate the abuse.

Cordoba had some quite pretty sights as we strolled about the town on our way back to the bus.

One of our stops was at this statue of Maimonides (1138–1204), a resident and exemplar of the tolerance of this city during his time.  He is widely viewed as the greatest Jewish philosopher of the medieval period and is still widely read today. The Mishneh Torah, his 14-volume compendium of Jewish law, established him as the leading rabbinic authority of his time and quite possibly of all time.  He also achieved fame as a physician and wrote medical treatises on a number of diseases and their cures.

Once we got to Seville, we just had time to drop our bags, wash our hands, and head off for a group dinner at El Cabildo, which was quite nice.  Tapas of cheeses, almonds, calamari, tuna-pepper-tomato salad, asparagus soup, and a main of nicely done grilled salmon.  Chocolate mousse for dessert.  We were quite stuffed, and decided to walk back to the hotel to work some of it off.  We stopped and took a night shot of the cathedral, then hoofed it home to bed.