Mesquita and the Alhambra

Cordoba and Granada, Wednesday and Thursday 25 & 26th May

Back on tour on Wednesday with a group so on our best behaviour again!

We started off in excellent fashion with a fast train trip from Madrid to Cordoba (for the record we reached 350km/h, and it took 1 3/4 hours vs 6 by road). While waiting for the train to depart from Madrid we checked out the railway station's tropical garden and turtle pond - yes they really do have one.

Tropical garden inside Madrid Atocha station. 

Some of the turtles playing in their sandpit.

The main event for Thursday was visiting the Mesquita, the famous Mosque-Cathedral at Cordoba.

This is an amazing building both in its history and its architecture. 

It began as a Visigoth Christian Basilica in the 6th century, became a Muslim Mosque at the start of the Moorish occupation of Spain in the mid 8th century, and then became a Christian Cathedral in the mid 13th century towards the end of the Christian re conquest of Spain.
The majority of the Mesquita was built during the Muslim period. When Granada was captured by the Christian Spanish monarchs (Isabel and Ferdinand II if you were wondering)  they had the vision to not raze the Mosque but to keep it and convert it to a Christian place of workship. Later, about 10% of the area of the Mosque was demolished to allow a cathedral to be built in the "middle", leaving us with more or less the result we have today.

Some of the 800 columns and double arches forming the Mosque.

The Cathedral altar.

Bell tower built around Mosque minnaret.

Continuing our Spanish history education, we moved on to Granada and on Friday visited the Alhambra palace. Alhambra is even more spectacular than the Mezquita. It was built by the Muslim rulers of Spain, and when captured by the same Isabel and Ferdinand, was taken over for their use. They made some changes to suit Eurpean tastes and added a renaissance palace. As a result the site today combines Moorish and European architecture. It also includes an enormous and magnificent garden (the Generalife garden). Water is a very important part of the palace design with fountains everywhere. The water is "piped" in from the nearby Sierra Nevada mountains via a 7km aqueduct built by the Moors.

 

A very small part of the Generalife garden.

Spent the afternoon exploring the town of Granada. It was the Corpus Christi festival so a local holiday and the city was packed with Spaniards enjoying a day out as well as tourists like us wandering. Some of the locals wear flamenco costume on this festival day which was a bonus - also saw some flamenco busking here and there.

It reached 32 degrees today and the heat finally forced us into a brief "siesta" sampling cocktails on the hotel verandah looking over the city. In good Spanish fashion we went back out later and checked out the old Arab quater called Albaycin - an incredible maze of narrow interesting streets, and around every corner another view of the Alhambra in the evening light.