Cordoba day 3 - the end
My last day, and it’s been hot, sunny and magical here. I am absolutely going to miss the feel of this place, and hopefully I’ll manage to come back, to see Granada, Cadiz, and all kinds of places around which I haven’t even tried to do. But it’s time to come home.
I’m starting to get lonely, and slightly mad, and various trivial things have started to nag at me, which is always a sign of soloing for too long. Also, I have an inch-wide blister on the sole of my foot, which is monstrously unhelpful for tourism. My sprained ankle hurts (only going downstairs, but there are a lot of stairs), my opposite knee hurts (probably because it’s been doing all the stairs)... I am done touristing. Still, I’ll be back at work on Wednesday when all this will seem like paradise.
Because it’s Monday, this was mostly a day of small, slightly off-beat things which don’t answer to municipal timetables. But it was also for the biggest, best and most amazing site in Cordoba - the Mosque-Cathedral. Which is why I came here.
It’s indescribably huge. You don’t get that so much from the outside, as the ticket queues are in the civilised but not overwhelming ablutions courtyard, with many orange trees and infinite teenage tour groups. But as soon as you get inside, you almost lose the people. The mosque was extended three times, big enough for 40000 worshippers, and there are whole swathes that the groups don’t penetrate, when it’s just you, some other pairs and singles, and hundreds and hundreds of columns and arches. It looks uniform, red/white striped double arches, matching pillars, and then after a while you start to see the arches vary constantly, and the pillars are reclaimed, bodged into place with different bases and tops to make them hold. It’s harmonious, but not monotonous, and it’s over 1000 years old, and the fact it’s still here is a miracle.The decorative bits by the mihrab are delicate, rich and simply beautiful.
The church within the mosque feels so wrong. The use of aisle-ends as chapels is fine, unsightly gilding and 17th century altarpieces are plentiful here, and you slightly tune them out. Even some of the late medieval reuses of the building, with unexpected bits of Gothic vault cropping up among the arches, I quite like. It’s recycling, living alongside. But then came the Inquisition, the limpieza di sangre, Luther and the Council of Trent. And living alongside wasn’t good enough. There’s a huge, white and gold Renaissance-baroque cathedral built inside the mosque. And, worse, upwards, so from the outside you see the e domed church profile rather than the flat mosque roof. It’s not a period of art or religion or politics that I have sympathy with, so I shouldn’t be surprised I hated it, but I was startled.
It’s such a huge space that there are little museums in it. About previous bits of the building, about excavations, the treasury. You keep alighting on something new. It was a church first. Or, actually, something Roman. Then a Visigoth church, then a church-mosque, then after the Christians were bought out it was a small mosque. Too small, so the great mosque building began. And then, it was taken back, after centuries. Reused. Till the 16th century, when this fist of Catholic certainty punched through the middle and made it ‘properly’ a church. I’m just glad they didn’t mine it for building materials.
So. That was amazing but also overwhelming. Ideally I’d have had a break to absorb it all, but somehow I didn’t. I plunged into the Juderia (Jewish quarter), which was enclosed, ghettoised, but still rather splendid in its heyday of the 13th century. (Expulsion of the Jews from Cordoba killed its economy - the city protested it, on economic grounds. But, see above, living alongside not good enough. Los Reyes Catolicos are not my guys. And honestly, there was an awful 1390s pogrom which probably started the collapse. Although you did get Jews, Christians and Muslims living alongside here for hundreds of years, it’s not cosy) It’s partly about walking the narrow streets, but also seeing small sites like the synagogue (yesterday), the Zoco, the mudejar-style chapel of St Bartholomew (it’s tiny, tiled and plastered brilliantly, full of quiet interest)... and some tourist tat, honestly. I went to the Casa Andalusi, which is absolutely worth a look for a 12th century house still in use, with patio, passageways, built into the old city wall of the medina and a Roman mosaic in the basement. But also full of incense, paper poems (paper was made in the Juderia) and all manner of gubbins with price tags. Quite fun all the same.
I would have liked some more time looking for patios (I missed the walk I had considered because I was in the Mezquita too long), but I really needed to sit down for a bit. And eventually I did after some circular wandering (I did in fact find extra patios, yay). Today’s tapas report: beetroot salmorejo (cold tomato soup); tuna with ‘mojito’ sauce (which google translate still thinks is a cocktail, but had capers and onions and no mint); and aubergines fried with honey which are basically pudding. I even had pudding, possibly the first time this holiday, but it was naranjas al antigua which is just sliced oranges with cinnamon, olive oil and maybe a tiny scatter of sugar. The oil is drizzled, and delicious.
I was again rather less active in the afternoon. I went into the Casa de las Cabezas, another authentically ancient house with a gruesome legend (about a man whose seven sons were decapitates and the heads hung outside, do tell me more), but it’s actually a wonderful rescue job of an old house that had fallen into disrepair. The structure with two main patios (herbs, flowers, water) plus a kitchen that’s semi-outdoors and a women’s patio (for laundry and loos), plus information about having men’s and women’s quarters long post-Islam in this area, and also eating seated on the floor - all very intriguing and not stories I had picked up elsewhere. You can go upstairs and see the cosier winter quarters, away from the airy downstairs, with everything including an indoor kitchen - it really brings home the impact of the weather here, to have two levels to live in depending on the heat.
And then I was rather done. I did have a wander near my hotel, which is interesting in itself, but I was limping and sore and ugh. Enough. I think I’m going to drink a large sangria in the hotel bar and call this holiday done.
(I went before posting. Let the record show it was a restrained vermouth, plus a glass of rioja crianza for dinner.)
This entry was originally posted at https://bruttimabuoni.dreamwidth.org/930141.html. You can comment here or there as you please!
I’m starting to get lonely, and slightly mad, and various trivial things have started to nag at me, which is always a sign of soloing for too long. Also, I have an inch-wide blister on the sole of my foot, which is monstrously unhelpful for tourism. My sprained ankle hurts (only going downstairs, but there are a lot of stairs), my opposite knee hurts (probably because it’s been doing all the stairs)... I am done touristing. Still, I’ll be back at work on Wednesday when all this will seem like paradise.
Because it’s Monday, this was mostly a day of small, slightly off-beat things which don’t answer to municipal timetables. But it was also for the biggest, best and most amazing site in Cordoba - the Mosque-Cathedral. Which is why I came here.
It’s indescribably huge. You don’t get that so much from the outside, as the ticket queues are in the civilised but not overwhelming ablutions courtyard, with many orange trees and infinite teenage tour groups. But as soon as you get inside, you almost lose the people. The mosque was extended three times, big enough for 40000 worshippers, and there are whole swathes that the groups don’t penetrate, when it’s just you, some other pairs and singles, and hundreds and hundreds of columns and arches. It looks uniform, red/white striped double arches, matching pillars, and then after a while you start to see the arches vary constantly, and the pillars are reclaimed, bodged into place with different bases and tops to make them hold. It’s harmonious, but not monotonous, and it’s over 1000 years old, and the fact it’s still here is a miracle.The decorative bits by the mihrab are delicate, rich and simply beautiful.
The church within the mosque feels so wrong. The use of aisle-ends as chapels is fine, unsightly gilding and 17th century altarpieces are plentiful here, and you slightly tune them out. Even some of the late medieval reuses of the building, with unexpected bits of Gothic vault cropping up among the arches, I quite like. It’s recycling, living alongside. But then came the Inquisition, the limpieza di sangre, Luther and the Council of Trent. And living alongside wasn’t good enough. There’s a huge, white and gold Renaissance-baroque cathedral built inside the mosque. And, worse, upwards, so from the outside you see the e domed church profile rather than the flat mosque roof. It’s not a period of art or religion or politics that I have sympathy with, so I shouldn’t be surprised I hated it, but I was startled.
It’s such a huge space that there are little museums in it. About previous bits of the building, about excavations, the treasury. You keep alighting on something new. It was a church first. Or, actually, something Roman. Then a Visigoth church, then a church-mosque, then after the Christians were bought out it was a small mosque. Too small, so the great mosque building began. And then, it was taken back, after centuries. Reused. Till the 16th century, when this fist of Catholic certainty punched through the middle and made it ‘properly’ a church. I’m just glad they didn’t mine it for building materials.
So. That was amazing but also overwhelming. Ideally I’d have had a break to absorb it all, but somehow I didn’t. I plunged into the Juderia (Jewish quarter), which was enclosed, ghettoised, but still rather splendid in its heyday of the 13th century. (Expulsion of the Jews from Cordoba killed its economy - the city protested it, on economic grounds. But, see above, living alongside not good enough. Los Reyes Catolicos are not my guys. And honestly, there was an awful 1390s pogrom which probably started the collapse. Although you did get Jews, Christians and Muslims living alongside here for hundreds of years, it’s not cosy) It’s partly about walking the narrow streets, but also seeing small sites like the synagogue (yesterday), the Zoco, the mudejar-style chapel of St Bartholomew (it’s tiny, tiled and plastered brilliantly, full of quiet interest)... and some tourist tat, honestly. I went to the Casa Andalusi, which is absolutely worth a look for a 12th century house still in use, with patio, passageways, built into the old city wall of the medina and a Roman mosaic in the basement. But also full of incense, paper poems (paper was made in the Juderia) and all manner of gubbins with price tags. Quite fun all the same.
I would have liked some more time looking for patios (I missed the walk I had considered because I was in the Mezquita too long), but I really needed to sit down for a bit. And eventually I did after some circular wandering (I did in fact find extra patios, yay). Today’s tapas report: beetroot salmorejo (cold tomato soup); tuna with ‘mojito’ sauce (which google translate still thinks is a cocktail, but had capers and onions and no mint); and aubergines fried with honey which are basically pudding. I even had pudding, possibly the first time this holiday, but it was naranjas al antigua which is just sliced oranges with cinnamon, olive oil and maybe a tiny scatter of sugar. The oil is drizzled, and delicious.
I was again rather less active in the afternoon. I went into the Casa de las Cabezas, another authentically ancient house with a gruesome legend (about a man whose seven sons were decapitates and the heads hung outside, do tell me more), but it’s actually a wonderful rescue job of an old house that had fallen into disrepair. The structure with two main patios (herbs, flowers, water) plus a kitchen that’s semi-outdoors and a women’s patio (for laundry and loos), plus information about having men’s and women’s quarters long post-Islam in this area, and also eating seated on the floor - all very intriguing and not stories I had picked up elsewhere. You can go upstairs and see the cosier winter quarters, away from the airy downstairs, with everything including an indoor kitchen - it really brings home the impact of the weather here, to have two levels to live in depending on the heat.
And then I was rather done. I did have a wander near my hotel, which is interesting in itself, but I was limping and sore and ugh. Enough. I think I’m going to drink a large sangria in the hotel bar and call this holiday done.
(I went before posting. Let the record show it was a restrained vermouth, plus a glass of rioja crianza for dinner.)
This entry was originally posted at https://bruttimabuoni.dreamwidth.org/930141.html. You can comment here or there as you please!