Mezquita

It is the most impressive Arabian mosque, the third-biggest in the world with an extension of 23,000 sq. meters, the most beautiful and original building of all Spain.

This Mezquita initiated the so-called Califal style, which combined Roman, Gothic, Byzantine, Syrian and Persian elements and was the starting-point of all Arabian-Hispanic architecture of the centuries to come, up to the Mudéjar-style of Arabians living in the Spain reconquered by Christians.

Caliph Abderramán I built the colossal hall, consisting of 11 naves with 110 columns, the capitals of which were taken from old Roman and Byzantine buildings. Above there is a second row of arcs, then an architectonic novelty, creating a unique ambience of light and shadow. Abderramán II added 8 more arcs in 833, with columns of white marble taken from the Roman amphitheater of Mérida. Alhakem II built in 961 the minaret, Mihrab, and the Kliba with its cupola of entangled arcs in 961, both being among the major attractions today. The last and most important enlargement was made in 987 by caliph Alamanzor, doubling the original size of the mosque and adding columns of blue and red marble. As the enlargement could be made only towards West, the river Guadalquivir in the South and the palace of the caliph in the East being very close, the mosque of Cordoba is the only one that doesn't have the Mihrab, or prayer recess, as its central point. The other particularity is that it is not orientated towards Mecca, but towards Damascus - perhaps because of nostalgic feelings of Abderramán I, who expressed in his poetry how much he was missing the mosques of his home-town.

Newly Christian Cordoba soon claimed the mosque as its own Church of the Virgin of the Assumption, building chapels against the interior walls and closing up the open northern facade.

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