This Woman Was Here

In 711 the Moors crossed the Straights of Gibraltar from North Africa and invaded the Iberian penninsula. They ruled southern Spain from Granada for almost 800 years until 1492 when Ferdinand and Isabella re-conquered Granada. Ferdinand and Isabella were buried in Granada. The streets are lined with fruit laden sour oranges (imported by Moors who used them to marinate fish and meat).

The Cathedral of Granada was begun in 1523 by Charles V, grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is incredibly ornate, with dozens of Baroque side altars with sculptures and paintings.

 

 

 

The Alhambra, which means The Red in Arabic (from the color of the walls) was built late in the Moorish period (begun in 1238). It was the palace of the Sultans. It has over two kilometers of defensive walls and forty towers.

The people (as many as 50,000) lived in Albaicín, a walled city of whitewashed houses just below the Alhambra.

The first building one sees in entering the Alhambra is the Christian Palace of Charles V, with a Renaissance exterior modeled on the Piti Palace and a round interior modeled on the Coliseum and Pantheon, was begun in 1531 but never finished and never lived in. It was intended to have three levels on the interior but only two were completed and the dome was never added.

The Alhambra has three Islamic palaces built in the 1300’s, The Palace of Justice (where ministers met), the Palace of Women, and the Palace of the Sultan.

 

 

The lower walls in many rooms are of inlaid (mosaic) tiles, which kept the rooms cool and could be cleaned easily, but the upper walls and many ceilings are of intricately molded geometric designs and inscriptions from the Koran.

The ceiling and wall decorations are molded from a mixture of alabaster, marble, and plaster, and were painted in bright green, red, yellow, and blue.

 

 

 

 

The doors and many of the ceilings were of inlaid cedar, also painted in primary colors. The Hall of the Ambassadors has eighty pieces of cedar in the ceiling.

The Palace for Women has four chambers (for the four wives permitted by Muslim law) and rooms above for the concubines (Sultans were permitted as many as they could afford).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The dominant feature in the palaces is water, with fountains at the center of every room and courtyard.

The water served for ablutions (Muslims must wash their face, hands and feet five times per day before prayers) and for cooling the rooms in hot summer months.

The Fountain of the Lions in the Sultan’s Palace (unusual because Muslims did not represent human or animal figures) was a gift of the Jewish community in gratitude for religious tolerance (all religions were allowed to practice their faiths freely). All of the water throughout the palaces and gardens is gravity fed from aqueducts that bring water from the Sierra Nevada mountains (snow covered) and the diameter of the pipes controls the water pressure to make fountain jets. The same water system is used today that was used in the 13th century.

The Generalife (meaning the gardens of the Sultan) feature terraced gardens where vegetable and fruit trees are grown and there are many, many fountains and water features.

 

The Alhambra is truly one of the most spectacular sites in the world.

 

Sevilla was a surprise. I never expected to fall in love with the city as we did. The weather was lovely, the orange trees were in bloom perfuming the streets, and both the Plaza de España and the Real Alcazar were beyond anything we imagined.

The Plaza de España was built for the 1929 Iboamerican exposition and was a spectacular display of architecture and tile. Sevilla was the port from which all the explorers departed for the Indies (Magellan and Columbus among them) and it received much of the wealth of the new world.

 

 

The walls that protected Sevilla were built by the Romans and restored by the Moors who built an alcazar inside the walls. The Christians had a terrible record of treatment of the Jews here as elsewhere in Spain (and Europe), killing 80% of the Jewish population at the end of the 14^th century and expelling the rest in 1492.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The horses in Sevilla are the prettiest I’ve seen, a mix between Arabic and Andalusia breeds.

The Cathedral of Sevilla was built over the old mosque, retaining the original square Giraldi tower.

When the tower was part of the mosque, the ramp (34 flights) leading to the top of the tower was used to ride a donkey to the top for the call to prayers.

It is the 3^rd (now 4^th) largest gothic cathedral in the world (after St. Peter’s in Rome and St. Paul’s in London). It was built in just 70 years from 1482-1552 with lots of money from wealthy families.

It has a main altar covered in gold leaf, a side altar of silver, and over 40 side chapels built by wealthy families.

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of Christopher Columbus’s tombs is in the cathedral. When his coffin was returned from Cuba, it contained only one finger bone, so the joke is may he rest in peace and pieces.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The real surprise of the day was the Real Alcazar built by the Moors but rebuilt after the Christian re-conquest of Sevilla in 1364 by Peter I and expanded by subsequent Spanish monarchs.

Peter loved the Moorish style and built his palace using Moorish motifs from the Alhambra (including Islamic designs and phrases). It is more stunning than the Alhambra because the palace and gardens are more extensive and more welcoming spaces.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Private courtyards open off of almost every room.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The sections of the alcazar built by later monarchs have elaborate tile walls with tapestries hung above for warmth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The gardens are the most extensive I have ever seen and were used in the filming of Game of Thrones.

After hours of exploring one spectacular garden after another, we had an aperitif at a garden cafe and were treated to a peacock display.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After leaving the gardens we wandered the charming narrow streets of the old Jewish quarter, renamed Santa  and managed to find both a good dry martini and a great gin and tonic.

 

The great mosque of Cordova was begun in 786, so it is one of the first mosques ever built.

 

The columns, which have different bases and capitals, were recycled from Roman temples (for 700 years southern Spain was a Roman colony).

 

 

 

 

Although there are few remains from the Visigoth period, (which followed the Roman period), there is one mosaic floor on display in the mosque.

In order to raise the height of the mosque, they took the double arch idea from Roman aqueducts and topped the pillars with alternating red brick and white limestone arches that were flexible and therefore withstood earthquakes. In 929 Cordoba became the capital of the western Islamic world. The mosque was expanded four times in the 8^th, 9^th and 10^th centuries as the population increased, eventually covering 20,000 square meters with 1,013 columns. Twenty thousand people could worship here at one time.

At the end of the 10^th century, the Christian emperor of Constantinople sent Bysantine mosaics as a gift to Cordova and they were installed using Islamic designs and styles. Under the Islamic rule in Al-Andaluz, the three religions coexisted.

When Ferdinand III re-conquered Cordova in 1236, the mosque was re-consecrated as a cathedral, the great arches on the exterior were enclosed, and private chapels were built by wealthy families around the exterior walls.

 

Charles V destroyed the middle section of the mosque in order to build a cathedral, reducing the columns to 856.

In the end, he regretted his decision, saying that he had destroyed something unique to create something mundane, but it is thought that by acting as a flying buttress in the middle of the building ,the central basilica helped the building withstand the devastating earthquake of 1755 that destroyed much of Lisbon and southern Spain.

There is little doubt that what makes the Cathedral of Cordoba so unique is that it represents the cross section of cultures and architectural styles of the people who have inhabited the area since the 8^th century BC.

 

The streets of the old Jewish quarter are barely four feet wide and wind in maze like patterns. Most of the buildings are whitewashed, with interior courtyards and walls decorated with blooming flowerpots. Although the remains of one of the oldest synagogues in Spain is located in Cordova, there is no longer a Jewish population here.

There are, however, three new mosques in Cordova, as a sizable portion of the population is Muslim.

Meimonides was born in Cordova in 1135 but spent much of his life in Morocco as a doctor to the Sultan.

We took the high speed AVE from Madrid to Barcelona, covering the distance in 2hrs 40 min rather than the 9hrs it would have taken by bus. The train was sleek and modern, and we had no sense that we were traveling at 190mph.

We crossed mostly dry barren land until we entered irrigated vineyards and almond orchards with the Monserat Mountains in the distance.

Barcelona is wedged between the mountains and the Mediterranean, so it is a densely populated city. On our way to our hotel, we toured Mont Juíc (so named because of the Jewish cemetery on the side of the hill) where the Olympic stadium is located. Wonderful views over the city and wonderful intricate inlaid river rock, tile, and bottle walkways. We were warned repeatedly that Barcelona is the capital for pickpockets, where professionals work in groups of three or four, so we were careful with our belongings.

Bull fighting was outlawed in Cataluña several years ago, so the central bullring with its Moorish arches was turned into a shopping plaza with restaurants on the top level.

Since the 1992 Olympics put Barcelona on the map, it is now one of the five most visited cities in Europe, and Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia Basilica is the most popular destination in Spain, surpassing even the Alhambra in number of yearly visitors.

Many of the monumental buildings in Barcelona were built for the 1929 World’s Fair: the fountain surrounded by semicircular display halls and the National Palace flanked by Venetian bell towers. The palace has never served as a royal residence but is used for receptions and as an art museum.

 

One segment of the 14^th century Medieval walls still stands but the rest were demolished in 1854 when the old town with its tiny winding streets was expanded into the new town with wide streets that run parallel to the sea.

The Olympic Village replaced the old industrial area near the port (primarily textile production) and 2,000 residences for athletes were built (now apartments).

Barcelona is probably best known for its artists: Picasso, Miro, and Gaudi (Barcelona’s most famous modernist architect).

The Picasso Museum is free on Sundays, so we willing stood in line for an hour to get in to see a spectacular collection of his early (and later) works. He spent his youth here and began studying art at a young age (his father was an art instructor). By the age of fourteen, he was producing large traditionally realistic paintings, many of his family members. My favorite is the first communion of his sister. The museum also has his Las Meninas series, several rooms of paintings inspired by Velasquez’ Las Meninas in The Prado, which we had seen several days earlier. The museum ends with his ceramics and a collection of photographs of Picasso in his later years.

Politically, Cataluña has its own language and identity and wants to become independent from Spain.

During WWII, Spain remained a non-combatant although Franco had received arms and material support from Germany during the Civil War and Franco clearly sympathized with the Axis powers (so much so that he changed the time to the same as it was in Germany and Italy, which it remains to this day).

He allowed a volunteer force (about 18,000) to serve with the Germans on the eastern front, but specified that they could not fight against English or French troops. An even larger group of Spaniards (close to 80,000) volunteered to fight with the resistance in France. Late

Interestingly, although Jews had not officially been allowed to practice their faith publicly in Spain since the 1492, the 1929 proclamation offering Spanish citizenship to descendants of Sephardic Jews was used to save thousands of Jews in Hungary and Eastern Europe. Thousands of Jews were saved by giving them Spanish citizenship and over 25,000 were allowed to flee through Spain to Portugal and the West.

This morning we toured the old Gothic section of the city and visited the Cathedral of Barcelona, which took over seven hundred years to complete.

The old quarter has narrow winding streets (some only a few meters wide).

Many of the old buildings were destroyed in the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, but this wall, once part of an old synagogue, survives.

 

 

 

 

 

This tiny church in the Gothic section where Gaudi attended services each day, shows the shrapnel marks from the Spanish Civil War when Franco’s troops bombed the square, killing forty children on recess in the square.

 

 

 

Barcelona’s second bullring (now used only for the occasional concert) is a fanciful blue and white creation.

Gaudi’s most famous work is La Sagrada Familia, the basilica begun in 1882 in a Gothic style. Gaudi took over as architect at the age of thirty-one in 1883 and worked on the building until he died at the age of seventy-four after being struck by a tram as he walked to the tiny church in the old Gothic section where he attended mass every day.

He died a pauper, having given all his money to the cathedral. As the story goes, when he was hit by the tram, he was mistaken for a beggar and taken to the old hospital, where he chose to die among the poor rather than be moved to the new hospital. In his lifetime he completed only the rear apse and one façade of the basilica.

Today, the interior of the basilica with its modernist stained glass windows, fanciful columns, and several heavily ornamented facades have been completed. The facades are covered with highly symbolic ornaments and statuary

The basilica is due to be finished in 2026 after the construction of at least five more towers. At the Sagrada Familia web site, there is time laps video of the completion of the basilica.

During the Spanish Civil War, mobs stormed the basilica and destroyed Gaudi’s workshop with its drawings, models, and designs, and work did not begin again until well after the Civil War. Luckily, fragments were salvaged and Gaudi had lectured daily on his designs to the students of the school for the workers he established beside the basilica so future work was able to be carried out in accordance with Gaudi’s original plans.

The basilica is an expiatory basilica constructed completely from donations (and today the hefty entrance fee to the church, over 20E), so we consider that we have bought some pardon for our sins and have contributed to the construction of the Sagrada Familia. I would not recommend taking the elevator to the top, an extra fee, because there was very little view and you have to climb down a tiny dark circular staircase afterwards.

Other of Gaudi’s works are on display throughout Barcelona. He was commissioned by wealthy citizens (primarily Güell) to design houses (Casa Mila or Las Pedreras, 1906-1912), Casa Batllo (another fanciful house designed for a textile industrialist).

Park Güell, which was intended to be a housing development for which Gaudi designed the entrance, infrastructure, public spaces and several houses, but the development never materialized and the city bought the hilltop as a park.

 

It is well known for its curvilinear mosaic benches, but the two layer stone walkways with their stone benches and massive overhead planters were a surprise.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Classical groups played in the lower level of one of the arcades where the acoustics were magical. We took bus 24, which dropped us at the entrance, but we would have had to wait ½ hour to enter (+8E) and we were exhausted, so we decided to walk around the public area of the gardens and head back to our hotel.