Day in Cordoba

Ten years ago I spent a week in Cordoba on a Spanish language course. I always promised myself I would return. On that occasion I fell on my feet: I had stayed with a couple of seventy something retired architects, the wife full of life and energy, the husband happy to put his feet up and read his paper. I became the 'go to' social partner for the wife's evening excursions to films, flamenco evenings and music bars. It was tremendous fun but exhausting. I was also told by one of the teachers at the school that Cordoba enjoyed the luxury of peaceful evenings as it was a day trip destination from the more well known cities of Seville and Granada. As I walked to my accommodation last night, surrounded by the noise of trundling suitcases and crowded streets I wondered whether that had now changed.

Plaza Mayor

Ten years may have passed but this morning as I set out there was a sense of the familiar. I walked the old Roman bridge, saw the derelict remains of mills in the Guadalquivir river and walked the maze of narrow streets in the old town. Today I was mainly planning to absorb Cordoba's atmosphere rather than go on a back-to-back tourist frenzy of sights. I did go to the mosque turned cathedral and enjoyed the cool of its courtyard but was too early to enter. I relaxed over coffee, enjoyed the cool comfort of a city park and bought essential supplies before treating myself to lunch in the Bodegas Campos restaurant where Tony Blair has eaten and where I last came to listen to some flamenco guitar in my role as male escort.

Roman Bridge

Cordoba is another place that features on the preface map of 'As I Walked Out…' but gets no mention in the book. It is surprising as it is a charming city of history and character, rightly famous for the cathedral although there is much more than that on offer. I eventually made it to the cathedral late afternoon. Built as a mosque in the 700s and turned into a church some 500 years later after the Moors were driven from Spain, it is a cavernous building inside and yet the rows and rows of arches in simple red and white from the original mosque give the place a sense of comfortable intimacy. Most of the building retains its original structure apart from discreet chapels at the edges and a high central nave which is deep in the building and comes as a bit of a shock when you happen across it: its decoration and finery stands in sharp contrast to the beautiful simplicity of the mosque to the point that it looks gaudy and brash. Personally I felt more comfortable, more at ease, in the surroundings of the mosque than in the ostentatiousness of the church: the building - and its designers- seem to speak through the architecture of the different way those two spaces bridge the gap between the earthly and the divine, one inspiring remoteness and awe, the other inclusion.

Christian Church

Despite my concerns when I arrived, Cordoba is still that relatively quiet city I remember from years ago. I liked it then and I like it now; it has a beauty to match Toledo or Segovia but without the crowds that those cities seem to attract. This was too fleeting a visit for me but tomorrow I must continue west towards Seville, hopefully just two days ride away.