The story of this place
In 785 Abd al-Rahman I, the sole Umayyad survivor of a massacre in Damascus, began the Great Mosque of Córdoba over a Visigothic church, buying the site's other half from Christians. Successive emirs and caliphs expanded it until a hypostyle hall of some 856 columns of jasper, onyx and marble carried double-tiered red-and-white horseshoe arches—an optical infinity. After Córdoba fell to Ferdinand III in 1236 it became a cathedral; in the 16th century Charles V let clergy carve a Renaissance nave into its heart, then reportedly regretted it: 'you have destroyed something unique to build something commonplace.' The mihrab still glitters with Byzantine gold mosaics.