Travelogue
Another rainy day.
Got empanadas at the shop a few blocks away, "dining in" this time rather than bringing them back to the hostel room in the rain. Then spent about two hours at the Archaeological Museum of Córdoba, which not only houses a lot of artifacts and displays from the Paleolithic through the Reconquista, but was built on top of a Roman theatre, so its basement level is largely excavations of the theatre: seating, stairs, drainage channels, etc.
We had a bit of time before our 2:00 timed entry to the Mezquita, so we stopped at a cafetería for pastries and hot chocolate (still in the rain). Then walked in the rain to the primary tourist attraction of Córdoba, the 10th-12th-century mosque with a 16th-century cathedral in the middle.
(Before that, there was a 6th-century Visigothic church on the same site, and probably something Roman before that; this city was a Roman provincial capital for 200 years before the Visigoths took over.)
There are mosques-turned-into-Christian-churches all over Spain, but this one is unusual in that the builders of the church destroyed as little as possible of the mosque, incorporating much of its architecture into the cathedral building. The interior is a seemingly infinite forest of red-and-white double arches, most of which are intact (and many of which include recycled Roman or Visigothic columns and capitals). The outermost row of them near the walls became the gates of chapels devoted to particular saints (and presumably sponsored by particular rich families or guilds in town). Sixteen of them in the middle were replaced with Gothic arches for the larger "Villaviciosa Chapel". The 16th-century cathedral altar area doesn't show much trace of the mosque (and really isn't to my taste!), but in other chapels they simply repainted the Moorish arches with 16th-17th-century Christian artwork (which also doesn't particularly ring my bell, but it's non-destructive).
After the Mezquita, we walked (in the rain) to the Royal Baths of the Caliph, which are partly archaeological ruins and partly reconstructed. But underground, so at least we were out of the rain.
Then walked (in the rain) through the Jewish Quarter. We were too close to closing time to see the Casa de Sefarad, which is about the life of pre-1492 Sephardic Jews, but we saw the preserved-and-restored early-14th-century synagogue (small but moving). Since there are so many tourists in the neighborhood, several other buildings have been turned into tourist attractions. The Casa Andalusi tries to present the feel of a 12th-century Al-Andalus urban house with internal courtyard and fountains. The furniture doesn't fit the time period, and there are a lot of obviously-modern books, lights, etc. mixed in with reconstructed stuff, but there's a nice Moorish tile mosaic in the basement. The next-door Al-Iksir Alchemy Museum is even weirder: again attractive courtyards and fountains, and they've gone to a lot of trouble to provide high-tech audioguides in various languages, but all the content seems to be modern woo-woo, nothing historical.
It finally stopped raining in time for us to have dinner (fideuhá, a sort of glorified Rice-a-Roni, with pork loin, chicken, and portabello mushrooms, followed by molten-centered chocolate cake).
Fell asleep last night to Easter-vigil bells, and occasional singing, in the distance.
The plan for today was to check out of the hostel, leave our luggage at the hostel management office, attend Easter services at the Mezquita, retrieve the car and the luggage, and drive back to Granada for tomorrow's Alhambra tour. It turns out that the fastest route to Granada goes by way of Altaquera, so we may get to see those Neolithic dolmens after all. However, on waking up this morning,![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shalmestere decided that Easter service was too much complexity to add to the schedule, so we'll just check out and drive to Granada by way of Altaquera.
Got empanadas at the shop a few blocks away, "dining in" this time rather than bringing them back to the hostel room in the rain. Then spent about two hours at the Archaeological Museum of Córdoba, which not only houses a lot of artifacts and displays from the Paleolithic through the Reconquista, but was built on top of a Roman theatre, so its basement level is largely excavations of the theatre: seating, stairs, drainage channels, etc.
We had a bit of time before our 2:00 timed entry to the Mezquita, so we stopped at a cafetería for pastries and hot chocolate (still in the rain). Then walked in the rain to the primary tourist attraction of Córdoba, the 10th-12th-century mosque with a 16th-century cathedral in the middle.
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 |
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(Before that, there was a 6th-century Visigothic church on the same site, and probably something Roman before that; this city was a Roman provincial capital for 200 years before the Visigoths took over.)
There are mosques-turned-into-Christian-churches all over Spain, but this one is unusual in that the builders of the church destroyed as little as possible of the mosque, incorporating much of its architecture into the cathedral building. The interior is a seemingly infinite forest of red-and-white double arches, most of which are intact (and many of which include recycled Roman or Visigothic columns and capitals). The outermost row of them near the walls became the gates of chapels devoted to particular saints (and presumably sponsored by particular rich families or guilds in town). Sixteen of them in the middle were replaced with Gothic arches for the larger "Villaviciosa Chapel". The 16th-century cathedral altar area doesn't show much trace of the mosque (and really isn't to my taste!), but in other chapels they simply repainted the Moorish arches with 16th-17th-century Christian artwork (which also doesn't particularly ring my bell, but it's non-destructive).
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After the Mezquita, we walked (in the rain) to the Royal Baths of the Caliph, which are partly archaeological ruins and partly reconstructed. But underground, so at least we were out of the rain.
Then walked (in the rain) through the Jewish Quarter. We were too close to closing time to see the Casa de Sefarad, which is about the life of pre-1492 Sephardic Jews, but we saw the preserved-and-restored early-14th-century synagogue (small but moving). Since there are so many tourists in the neighborhood, several other buildings have been turned into tourist attractions. The Casa Andalusi tries to present the feel of a 12th-century Al-Andalus urban house with internal courtyard and fountains. The furniture doesn't fit the time period, and there are a lot of obviously-modern books, lights, etc. mixed in with reconstructed stuff, but there's a nice Moorish tile mosaic in the basement. The next-door Al-Iksir Alchemy Museum is even weirder: again attractive courtyards and fountains, and they've gone to a lot of trouble to provide high-tech audioguides in various languages, but all the content seems to be modern woo-woo, nothing historical.
It finally stopped raining in time for us to have dinner (fideuhá, a sort of glorified Rice-a-Roni, with pork loin, chicken, and portabello mushrooms, followed by molten-centered chocolate cake).
Fell asleep last night to Easter-vigil bells, and occasional singing, in the distance.
The plan for today was to check out of the hostel, leave our luggage at the hostel management office, attend Easter services at the Mezquita, retrieve the car and the luggage, and drive back to Granada for tomorrow's Alhambra tour. It turns out that the fastest route to Granada goes by way of Altaquera, so we may get to see those Neolithic dolmens after all. However, on waking up this morning,
shalmestere decided that Easter service was too much complexity to add to the schedule, so we'll just check out and drive to Granada by way of Altaquera.