A visit to Cordoba

As we are in Portugal for several months we decided to have a change of scenery and went to Cordoba for a couple of days in our hire car.

We last visited some five years ago and decided to book revisit the hotel we used last time. This is the Hotel Conquistador which is just across the road from the Cathedral or Mesquita which is the main reason to visit this city.

There is a campsite just outside the city and when we visited we noticed a couple of motorhomes parked on the road (Avenida Fray Albino) beside the river not far from the Roman bridge, although I am not sure if you could park overnight but it might be possible out of season.

the Roman Bridge

It was a four hour journey from Cabanas and most of it was motorway so not too stressful a trip,save that our satnav had managed to lose all its maps on the last update, fortunately the iPhone came to the rescue. We shall have to revisit the Garmin website and try to reload maps again otherwise the nice man inside the iPhone may become our new travel friend. Cordoba is a lovely place for a short city visit, plenty of nice places to visit, good eating and if shopping is your thing then El Cortes Ingles is in town too.

the view from our hotel room

As we had made good time we were able to visit the Alcazar de Los Reyes Cristianos which translates as the castle
of the Christian kings. There is not much castle left now but the gardens are beautiful with orange trees, water features within avenues of trees ..

On our second day we went to Cordoba Cathedral, more often referred to as the mesquita or mosque. This was built by the Moors on the site of a Visigoth temple and extended over the couple of hundred years when this part of Spain was under Muslim rule so that eventually it was almost 23,000 square metres and one do the largest mosques in the world. It was started by Abd ar-Rahman to rival the great mosque of Damascus, unfortunately it looks as though we shall never get to Damascus to compare mosques.

After the Moors were ousted the incoming Christian rulers decided to build a cathedral at the heart of the mosque which  means that today you enters beautiful and atmospheric mosque with nearly 900 columns and beautiful coloured arches that seem at time to stretch into infinity.

However once you get to the centre you meet a magnificent  cathedral which has been restored since we last visited. When we came here five years ago the cathedral was boarded off as the renovations were ongoing. The restoration is magnificent.

We revisited the mesquita in the evening for a son et lumiere show which despite the OTT flowery narration was well worth the €9 each it cost us jubilados (sounds more fun than retired doesn't it).

inside the mesquita which has over 800 columns

Palacio de Viana is well worth a visit too,this  was once a grand house with many patios, the patios can be visited unescorted for a small fee but for the palace its   escorted tours only and only in Spanish. Not only were the patios beautiful to visit but the free guide identified the plants in each patio which was a nice touch but not sure how well an Andalucian inspired patio would survive in Norfolk in the winter.

When we left Cordoba we visited medina Al-Zahara which is about 10miles from Cordoba. This was a development started in 936AD as a show of wealth and power of the caliph.It did not last long and soon was abandoned and much of its building was taken away for other uses. It was rediscovered in 1961 when excavation began and remains ongoing. 

Since we last visited a new visitor centre has been created which contains a museum and auditorium and there is now a shuttle bus taking you to the site. The museum is free but the shuttle bus costs 3euro return for two jubilados. If you are in a motorhome you can park comfortably in the car park.