Travel Theme: Interior

Here are two photos which were taken by me in 1985 and scanned a few years earlier.

The photos show the Moorish architecture of the Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba.

I have never visited a mosque or church which has such an unique architectural design; a design which I dearly want to share with others.

I don’t think I can better describe this than what has already presented in Wikipedia which is presented below in italics:

The Mosque – Cathedral of Cordoba is the Catholic Christian cathedral of the  Diocese of Cordoba dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary and located in the Spanish region of Andalusia. It originally was a Catholic Christian church built by the  Visigoths, although it was later converted to an Islamic mosque in the Middle Ages; after the Reconquista, it was made a Catholic Christian church once again. The cathedral is regarded as one of the most accomplished monuments of Moorish architecture.

The building is most notable for its arcaded hypostyle hall, with 856 columns of jasper, onyx, marble, and granite. These were made from pieces of the Roman temple which had occupied the site previously, as well as other destroyed Roman buildings, such as the Merida amphitheater. The double arches were a new introduction to architecture, permitting higher ceilings than would otherwise be possible with relatively low columns. The double arches consist of a lower horseshoe arch and an upper semi-circular arch. The famous alternating red and white voussoirs of the arches were inspired by those in the Dome of the Rock,  and also resemble those of the Aachen Cathedral, which were built almost at the same time. A centrally located honey-combed dome has blue tiles decorated with stars.

Please enjoy 🙂