It’s impossible to overemphasise the beauty of Córdoba’s multiarched Mezquita and one perfect reason to visit Cordoba. A symbol of Islamic culture that flourished here more than a millennium ago with all its lustrous decoration, at a age when Muslims, Jews and Christians lived side by side.
Arab chronicles recount how Abd ar-Rahman I purchased half of the Hispano-Roman church of San Vicente for the Muslim community’s Friday prayers, and then, in AD 784, bought the other half on which to erect a new mosque. Three later extensions nearly quintupled the size of Abd ar-Rahman I's mosque and brought it to the form you see today – with one major alteration: a 16th-century cathedral plonked right in the middle (hence the often-used description ‘Mezquita-Catedral’).