81½ M. RAILWAY (Seville and Madrid Line) in 2¾–4¾ hrs. (fares 16 p.
40, 12 p. 30, 7 p. 40 c.); one _train de luxe_ daily, 1st cl. only,
fare 10 per cent higher. Trains start from the Estación de Córdoba.
_Seville_, see p. 59. We follow the Guadalquivir upstream, at some
distance from its lofty reddish banks, which are visible at times.
Nearing (13½ M.) _Brenes_ we enjoy a last retrospect of the cathedral of
Seville with the Giralda.
22 M. _Tocina_, the junction for Mérida and Lisbon. Beyond (25½ M.)
_Guadajoz_ we cross to the right bank of the Guadalquivir. 46½ M.
_Peñaflor_, adjoining rapids of the river which drive large mills. 49 M.
_Palma del Río_, at the confluence of the Guadalquivir with the _Genil_
(p. 74). 67½ M. _Almodóvar_, with a loftily situated Moorish castle, now
being restored.
81½ M. =Cordova.=—At the STATION (_Estación de Madrid, Sevilla y
Málaga_; Pl. B, C, 1; Rail. Restaur.) are omnibuses from the chief
hotels.
HOTELS (comp. p. 51; charges should be arranged beforehand). _Hot.
Suizo_ (Pl. a; C, 2), corner of Calle Duque de Hornachuelos and the
narrow Calle Diego León, pens, from 12½ p., variously judged.—Less
expensive: _Hot. de Oriente_ (Pl. c; C, 2), pens. 8–10 p.; _Hot. de
España & Francia_ (Pl. b; C, 2), pens. 8 p.; _Hot. Simón_ (Pl. d; C,
2), pens. 5–6 p., very fair; these three are in the Paseo del Gran
Capitán; _Cuatro Naciones_, Calle San Miguel 4.
CAFÉS. _Café-Restaur. Suizo_, Calle Ambrosio de Morales (Pl. D, 3);
_La Perla_, Calle del Conde de Gondomar No. 1, _Cervecería Alemana_
No. 8.
POST & TELEGRAPH OFFICE (Pl. D, 3), Plazuela de Seneca.
BRITISH VICE-CONSUL, _Richard Eshott Carr_.
HALF-A-DAY, when time presses: _Cathedral_ (open all day, except 12–2;
closes 2 hrs. before sunset); visit to the Mihrâb, Renaissance choir,
Mudejar chapel, etc., for which a permiso (2 p.) is obtained at the
Oficina de la Obrería, adjoining the Puerta del Perdón; then the
_Guadalquivir Bridge_, with the _Calahorra_; the _Paseo del Gran
Capitán_ and _Jardines de la Victoria_.
_Cordŏva_, Span. _Córdoba_ (391 ft.), a provincial capital and the seat
of a bishop, with 60,000 inhab., lies at the foot of the _Sierra de
Córdoba_, a spur of the Sierra Morena, in a plain sloping gently down to
the _Guadalquivir_. The town, whose ancient glory has long departed, now
contains little or nothing to interest the expectant traveller except
the mosque, now the Cathedral, which in spite of many later additions
and disfigurements, is still the grandest monument in Spain of the
Moorish period. Other memorials of this Mecca of the Occident, once
famous as a patroness of science also, now survive only in several
portals and inscriptions.
[Illustration: CÓRDOBA]
[Illustration: Guadalquivir]
_Corduba_, the most important of the ancient Iberian towns on the
upper course of the Bætis, became a Roman colony in 152 B.C., and was
noted for its commerce and its wealth. The Visigothic king _Leovigild_
wrested it in 571 from the Byzantines and made it an episcopal see.
After the decisive battle of 711 (p. 51) Cordova was captured by the
Moors, aided by the Jews who were alienated by the arrogance of the
Visigoths. With the Moorish sway begins the world-wide fame of the
city, especially from the time when the emir _Abderrahmân I._, of the
house of the _Omaiyades_ (p. 485), on his escape from the massacre of
his family at Damascus, settled at Cordova in 756 and declared his
independence of the Oriental caliphate. As the capital of the Spanish
or western caliphate, Cordova soon became the wealthiest city in
Spain, and even for a short time the richest in Europe, notably under
_Abderrahmân II._ (822–52) and _Abderrahmân III._ (912–61), the
greatest of the Omaiyades, and also under the governor (hâjib)
_Al-Mansûr_ (d. 1002). It even rivalled Bagdad and Fez as a brilliant
centre of Mohammedan culture, to which students flocked from every
part of the Occident. At length, after the _Almoravides_ and
_Almohades_ (p. 95), who had been summoned to aid the citizens against
the Christians, had vainly attempted to arrest the decay of the city,
Cordova fell, in 1236, into the hands of _Ferdinand III. of Castile_,
who expelled the Moorish inhabitants and in 1248 made Seville his
residence. The city afterwards fell into decay and poverty, and the
once highly extolled Campiña became a desolate wilderness.
See ‘Cordova’, by _A. F. Calvert_ and _W. M. Gallichan_ (London,
1907).
From the Carrera de la Estación, or ‘station street’, bearing a little
to the left, we enter the _Paseo del Gran Capitán_ (Pl. C, 1, 2), the
favourite promenade of the townsfolk on summer evenings.
At the S. end of the Paseo, near the church of _San Nicolás de la Villa_
(Pl. C, 2), with its octagonal tower, once a minaret, we take the Calle
del Conde de Gondomar to the left, and then, just short of the Hotel
Suizo, follow the Calle de Jesús María (Pl. C, 2, 3) to the right. This
street, continued by the Calle de Angel de Saavedra, the Calle
Pedregosa, and the Calle Céspedes, leads to the S. to the cathedral.
The **=Cathedral= (Pl. C, 3, 4; adm., see p. 68), once the _Mesjid
al-Jâmia_, or ‘chief mosque’ of the city, one of the greatest in the
world, and still called _La Mezquita_, is the grandest and noblest
creation of Moorish architecture in Spain. The mosque was founded by
Abderrahmân I. in 785, on the site of a Christian church, and was
intended to form a great religious centre for all believers in Spain,
and to induce the great stream of western pilgrims to repair to Cordova
instead of to Mecca. A model for the edifice was found in the arcaded
courts and colonnaded halls of the Egyptian mosques (such as the Amru
Mosque, p. 460). The original edifice contained only ten rows of
columns, which formed eleven longitudinal and twelve transverse aisles.
The central aisle was a little wider than the others and ended in a
Mihrâb, or prayer-recess, designed to mark the direction of Mecca
(Kibla). As the building soon proved inadequate for the population,
which was rapidly increased by accessions from the East, Abderrahmân
II., in 833–48, added seven transepts on the S. side and erected a new
mihrâb. A further prolongation by fourteen transepts was effected by
AlHâkim II. (961–76), after which the magnificent third mihrâb (mihrâb
nuevo) formed the termination of the building. Though the mosque was now
considered the finest in the Occident, rivalling the Kairuin mosque at
Fez, it failed to satisfy the ambition of Al-Mansûr (p. 69). As the
sloping ground on the S. side precluded extension in that direction,
this governor, in 987–90, caused seven new rows of columns to be raised
on the E. side, thus increasing the number of aisles to nineteen, but
destroying the symmetrical plan of the building, which required the
mihrâb, or holy of holies, to be in line with the main axis of the
building.
After the conquest of Cordova by the Christians in 1236 (p. 69) the
mosque was dedicated to the Virgin (Virgen de la Asunción). The
Spaniards at first confined their operations to walling up most of the
doors and then fitting up side-chapels along the walls. As the needs of
the Christian ritual, however, soon demanded the construction of a choir
(primitivo coro), part of the second mihrâb and the adjoining aisles had
in 1260 to be demolished. Still greater damage was done by the insertion
of the Renaissance choir in the centre of the building, and of the Sala
Capitular, or sacristy, in the middle of the S. wall.
The GROUND PLAN forms an immense rectangle of about 575 by 427 ft., of
which fully a third is occupied by the court. Court and church are
surrounded by a fortress-like battlemented wall which, on three sides,
rests on massive substructions. Nothing indicates the object of the
building except the rich portals, flanked with niches and windows, and,
on the N. side, adjoining the Calle del Obispo Herrero, the _Campanario_
or bell-tower (305 ft. high), which was substituted for the Moorish
minaret in 1593. Ascent of the tower interesting (adm. 25 c.; 255
steps).
The *_Puerta del Perdón_, the main gateway, restored in 1377 on the
model of the gate of that name at Seville (p. 63), adjoins the
clock-tower and leads into the—
*_Patio de los Naranjos_ (‘orange-court’), once the court of the mosque,
where the faithful performed their ablutions. Light and spacious, yet
well-shaded by orange and palm-trees, watered by five fountains, and
always enlivened with groups of quiet visitors, it presents a typical
scene of Oriental repose. The avenues were originally laid out in line
with the colonnades in the interior of the mosque. The old arcades of
the court (claustro) are now walled up on the N. side. Of the nineteen
gates on the S. side, two only, the _Puerta de las Palmas_, the chief
entrance to the cathedral, and the small doorway of the eastmost
colonnade are now open.
The *INTERIOR OF THE CATHEDRAL, in spite of its moderate height (37
ft.), and in spite of much disfigurement, is singularly impressive. In
the subdued light the forest of columns seems endless. They average 13
ft. only in height, and are of the most diverse materials, many of them
having been brought from late-Roman buildings or from Christian
churches. The capitals show a marvellous wealth of design; their bases
are buried in the pavement, the level of which has been raised by 11–14
inches in the course of centuries. The vast number of horseshoe arches
which connect the columns, in the direction of the length of the church,
and the upper semicircular arches resting on projecting pillars impart
peculiar life to the building. The painted timber-ceilings of the
different roofs have been restored in their original style. The
sumptuous mosaic pavement has disappeared, and so too have the countless
chandeliers and lamps which burned perpetually during the Moorish
period.
The wealth of artistic decoration was lavished chiefly on the mihrâbs,
the first of which has been entirely destroyed. The second and third
were each provided with a vestibule and two side-rooms, part of which
was formerly shut off to form the Caliph’s maksûra (or court-platform).
The vestibule of the *Second Mihrâb, with its superb shell-vaulting,
still exists.
The **THIRD MIHRÂB is considered a marvel of art. The front is adorned
with two rows of columns, one above the other, and with double toothed
arches. The vestibule, now Capilla de San Pedro, and the prayer-niche
itself, a kind of heptagonal chapel of barely 13 ft. in diameter,
exhibit the most elaborate efforts of early-Moorish art, especially in
the rich marble plinth and in the coloured glass mosaics executed by
Byzantine artists. The toothed arches of the windows and the boldly
interlacing arches of the superb dome point to a later high development
of Moorish art.
Of the CHRISTIAN ADDITIONS to the church one of the most noteworthy is
the sumptuous _Capilla Mudéjar de San Fernando_, to the left of the
second mihrâb, erected over the old royal vault. The *_Renaissance
Choir_ (Coro and Capilla Mayor), designed by _Hernán Ruiz the Elder_ in
1523, was completed, with many alterations, in 1627. Though only 256 by
79 ft. in size, it is crowded with no less than 63 columns, and it rises
high above the roof of the mosque. It is considered a masterpiece of the
plateresque style, but has ruined the original symmetry of the mosque.
The =Alcázar= (Pl. C, 4; now a prison), erected in 1328, contains but
scanty relics of the ancient Moorish castle.
The Calle Torrijos, on the W. side of the cathedral, descends to the
_Puerta del Puente_, a triumphal arch of the time of Philip II., on the
site of the Moorish bridge gateway. The Moorish *=Bridge= (Pl. C, D, 4)
of sixteen arches, resting on Roman foundations, here unites Cordova
with the S. suburb of _Campo de la Verdad_. Halfway across we have a
fine view of the cathedral, and of a dam, up the river, with Moorish
mills. The massive tête-de-pont, _Calahorra_ (Iberian _Calagurris_),
also is of Moorish origin.
Returning into the town from the bridge, we may next visit the _Puerta
Almodóvar_ (Pl. B, 3), a relic of the Moorish city-wall, and then walk
through the _Jardines de la Victoria_ to the station.