Roberto, the Professor we met on the city tour in Toledo, lives in Cordoba. He is a retired paleobotanist who has established a museum attached to the Cordoba Botanical Gardens. We took a city bus there this morning for a personal tour of the gardens and the museum. He has visited Joggins in Nova Scotia and is working on a 10 year project dating the fossils of that area.
How lucky we were to have met him because it turns out he also knows a lot about the area. He gave us a a tour of the Mezquita (photo above) explaining the history which is very complicated. I was reminded of when I was a child trying to understand the story of Louisbourg and the French/ English struggle. Substitute Moors and Spanish and perhaps a bit more violence and you've got it. The Mezquita was built by a Muslim refugee from Damascus who escaped to southern Spain. Several generations and many additions later you have the present day Mezquita, the second largest Mosque in the world, taken over in the 13th century by the Spanish Catholics who demolished part of the interior to build a renaissance cathedral. The structure was so huge they had no means to destroy it so, luck for us today, it was converted to a church. Sad though! Carlos V who permitted the travesty was said to have commented ``What you have made here can be found in many other places but what you have destroyed is to be found nowhere else in the world``
It is one of the wonders of the world yet many people have never heard of it. You can see more pictures of this amazing structure on our Picassa web site.
http://picasaweb.google.ca/nancy.lewis56/THEMEZQUITA
This is Roberto who was very happy to share his knowledge of the Mezquita with us. He also took us to a special restaurant for a typical Cordoban meal. He is standing in front of his museum. The darker line shows where the Guadalaquiver River flooded last week. Some rain but also the release of the reservoirs after so much water.
Bob and I were so tired after the Mezquita, I have to say Roberto did us in! We collapsed at the hotel. No night life for us!
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