Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba

This huge building is in Córdoba, a city in Spain.

It was built long ago as a mosque. Later it became a cathedral. Inside is a forest of columns!

The Mosque-Cathedral stands in the old center of Córdoba, a city in Andalusia, in southern Spain, near the Guadalquivir River. UNESCO says the historic center around it makes the perfect setting for the building.

It was first built as the city's great mosque and became a cathedral in 1236. That is why it has two names in one. Inside, a 'forest' of columns holds up rows of arches, and among them rises a tall cathedral hall from the 1500s.

UNESCO inscribed the Great Mosque of Córdoba on the World Heritage List in 1984 and in 1994 extended the property to include part of the Historic Centre, the Alcázar, the Roman Bridge and the Calahorra Tower, 80.28 ha in all. Its statement calls the building 'an architectural hybrid' joining artistic values of East and West.

The cathedral chapter's official site describes the cathedral spaces, begun 'in the immensity of the forest of columns', as a dialogue of Gothic, Renaissance and Mannerist art joined to the older caliphal building.

A tall bell tower stands next to a big courtyard. Orange trees and palm trees grow there.

Inside the building, a tall hall was added later.

The bell tower is 54 meters high, the tallest building in Córdoba, the cathedral says. It was built from 1593 around what was left of the old minaret, the tower of the mosque.

Beside it lies the Courtyard of the Orange Trees, planted with orange trees, palms and cypresses in rows. Among the forest of columns, the architect Hernán Ruiz I began a tall cathedral hall in 1523; his son and later Juan de Ochoa finished its high vaults by 1607.

The 54 m bell tower, the city's tallest structure according to the chapter, wraps the remains of the caliphal minaret of 951–952 in a thick wall; Hernán Ruiz III built its bell stage from 1593, Juan Sequero de Matilla added the clock stage and Gaspar de la Peña the lantern. The chapter says sources give that minaret about 47 m and that it served as a model for minarets in Seville, Rabat and Marrakesh.

The Courtyard of the Orange Trees took its present garden form from 1597, with orange trees, cypresses and palms in rows, 'as if' continuing the columns inside, and fountains. Inside, Hernán Ruiz I began the Latin-cross cathedral space in 1523; Hernán Ruiz II raised its walls with eight buttresses, and Juan de Ochoa covered the crossing with an oval dome in 1599–1607.

This photo was taken from high up in the air.

Can you see the tall tower, the courtyard of trees and the many long roofs side by side?

The photo was taken from the air on 21 March 2010, looking from the southwest. You can see the bell tower at the upper left, the courtyard of orange trees and palms, and rows of long, parallel roofs. The taller cathedral hall rises in the middle.

All around are the white houses and narrow streets of the historic center, which UNESCO also protects.

The aerial photograph (21 March 2010, by Toni Castillo Quero; a Commons caption gives the view as from the southwest) shows the ensemble: the bell tower at the upper left, the Courtyard of the Orange Trees, the rows of parallel gabled roofs, the higher cathedral transept in the middle with a dark eight-sided roof at its end, and the buttressed outer walls with their arched gateways.

UNESCO notes that the Historic Centre still has many traditional houses, among them courtyard houses, the casa-patio, of Roman origin with an Andalusian touch.