Travel to Spain: Cordoba: the Mesquita: Photo 1

The view over the Juderia, with the Puerta de Almadovar in the foreground.  Smack in the center is the cathedral, which was built literally in the middle of an immense Friday or congregational mosque.  Charles V is supposed to have deplored the change--is supposed to have said: "You have destroyed something unique to build something commonplace"--but Charles did much the same thing himself with the palace he put cheek-to-jowl against the Nazrid palaces of the Alhambra.  Besides, the mosque was built on the site of the Visigothic Basilica of San Vicente, purchased and razed by Abdel Rahman I, and the basilica had earlier replaced a Roman temple.

The cathedral builders also added a bell tower on top of  the mosque's massive minaret.  Both the tower and the cathedral-in-the-mosque dominate the old city.

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