Cordoba’s basilica is now my favorite. Here is why: The Moors, (Muslims) conquered the area in 785AD, crushing the Christians and destroying their church. A mosque was built over the site and, with some Christian architectural influence, continued to grow and expand to become the center of western Islam, until 1236 when King Ferdinand III came in with a vengeance and drove the Moors out.
To his credit, rather then destroying the mosque, he built a cathedral on the inside! Never before and never since has this happened. The contrast between the sprawling Islamic Mosque surrounding a beautiful and spacious basilica is stunning. Hence my favoritism.
I don’t think you will see this anywhere else in the world. Islamic and Christian architecture/iconography side by side.
An hour and a half drive to Sevilla (sa-VEE-ah) for two days. Still hot, 107 degrees is the norm now. We had reserved a hotel on the outskirts of the city, (tourist parking is illegal in some of these towns), planning to take the city bus in. A bit of a challenge, again, few people speak English here! First we waited on the wrong side of the street for the bus, then we realized it was Sunday when most everything either shuts down, slows down, or stops. Finally a bus shows up and we take a rather circuitous route into town. But we made it, pinned it on our phone and away we went for a day of exploring.
Small city, lots of narrow streets, here they hang linen over the streets/alley ways to cool the areas between the buildings. As we get accustomed to the area, we arrive at the Cathedral and Giralda Bell Tower. Third largest in the world. Took 100 years to build, the architects are quoted saying that they wanted to make it so big that anyone who saw it would “take us for madmen”. They succeeded. Interestingly, there was a huge crowd OUTSIDE the cathedral. They opened the door and everybody flowed in; we joined the flow. We did notice everyone was dressed way better than us. Sure enough, as we got further in, we were told we weren’t invited and weren’t allowed to sit down with the locals.
A big event was in the works, so I tried to get in at another spot, again I was turned down. Sandals and shorts do not make a Sevillian Catholic. The cathedral holds several thousand, it filled to overflow. We “commoners” stood at the periphery; now we had to stay to see what was going on. A few pictures follow. It must have been a “State of the Union” thing by the local Cardinal/Arch Bishop, we think. Tons of robed priests, nuns sat in a special area, and then the 7,000 pipe-pipe organ kicked in. Whoa, that was amazing. Although we were spectators and not participants, very impressive.
Where we were “locked out” actually gave us a pretty good view of what was going on!
Later that evening we went to a Flamenco show. This was not your Disney-like twirling/castanets dance. We watched a noisy, sexual battle between body, shoe and floor. Sweaty. Wow!
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