Caliphal Córdoba and the Jewish quarter: a self-guided walk

By Alleytale

Caliphal capital to Sephardic quarter

Córdoba became the seat of an independent caliphate in 929, and the old city still holds its layers: a Roman bridge, the caliphs' palace, baths and mosque, and a Jewish quarter inside the wall. The walk takes them in that order.

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The stops

1. 1Calahorra Tower

   Start at this fortress of Islamic origin, built to guard the south end of the Roman bridge. It is first mentioned in 1236, when Castile took Córdoba, and in the 14th century King Henry II added a moat and a second tower joined to the first by a drawbridge. Since 1987 it has housed the Living Museum of al-Andalus, which presents the city's medieval high point between the 9th and 13th centuries.

   

2. 2Roman Bridge

   For about two thousand years this was the only bridge over the Guadalquivir, which is why locals still call it the Old Bridge. The Romans built it, but most of what you cross dates from the Arab reconstruction in the 8th century, and it now has 16 arches. Only the 14th and 15th arches, counted from the gate ahead, are still original.

   

3. 3Puerta del Puente

   This Renaissance gate was built in the 16th century to commemorate a visit by King Philip II, on the spot where the old gates linked the city to the Roman bridge and the Via Augusta. The architect Hernán Ruiz III took over the work but, it seems, money ran short, and the gate was left unfinished. In 1928 it was rebuilt as a memorial gate, repeating its outer face on the inner side.

   

4. 4Triumph of Saint Raphael

   Raphael is Córdoba's guardian archangel. Tradition says he appeared in a dream to Father Andrés de las Roelas during a 17th-century plague and promised to save the city, and monuments called Triumphs of Saint Raphael began to rise across Córdoba before the century was out. Most are a plain column topped by the archangel with his fish and his gourd, but this one at the Puerta del Puente, by Michel Verdiguier, is far more elaborate.

   

5. 5Albolafia Waterwheel

   This waterwheel, 15 metres across, is a replica of the one that lifted river water into an aqueduct for the city and the nearby Alcázar. Nobody is sure who built the mill: scholars have argued for the 9th century under Abd al-Rahman II, and for 1136 to 1137 under an Almoravid governor. The original wheel was taken down in 1492 on the orders of Queen Isabella, who complained of the noise while she lay sick in the Alcázar.

   

6. 6Alcázar of the Christian Monarchs

   Before this fortress, the ground held the palace of the Umayyad emirs and caliphs of al-Andalus, with baths, gardens and a library said to be the largest in the West. King Alfonso XI of Castile began the building you see in 1328, in the Mudéjar style, which is why it still looks Islamic. Isabella and Ferdinand later made it one of their main homes and a base for their campaign against Granada.

   

7. 7Caliphal Baths

   Built in the 10th century under Caliph al-Hakam II for the people of the palace next door, these baths follow the Roman pattern of a cold room, a warm room and a hot room. The warm room, the largest, has a vaulted ceiling with small, often star-shaped skylights, resting on marble columns between horseshoe arches. The baths were later buried to make a small square, and came to light again by accident in 1903, during gardening work.

   

8. 8Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba

   Abd al-Rahman I began the Great Mosque in 785, reusing Roman and Visigothic columns, and his successors kept enlarging it until the late 10th century, always repeating its two-tiered arches. Al-Hakam II added the richly decorated mihrab, and al-Mansur's extension to the east in 987 and 988 made it the largest mosque in the Muslim world outside Abbasid Iraq. In 1236 it became a cathedral, and from 1523 a Renaissance nave and transept were built into its centre, over the objections of the city council.

   

9. 9Calleja de las Flores

   This dead-end lane was once a courtyard shared by neighbours, and its flowerpots began in September 1939, when Felisa, the mother of Rafaela Tena, ran out of room on her terrace and put the rest in the street. In the mid-1950s the architect Víctor Escribano Ucelay gave it its arches and cobbles and a caliphal capital at the corner where it begins, and the octagonal fountain with a Roman column followed in 1960. From the small square at the end, you can frame the bell tower of the Mezquita.

   

10. 10Chapel of San Bartolomé

    This small funerary chapel dates from between 1390 and 1410 and is one of Córdoba's finest examples of Mudéjar art. Its walls are richly decorated with plasterwork and tiles in plant and geometric patterns, with the coats of arms of the Knights of the Band, an order created by King Alfonso XI, and inscriptions in both Kufic and Naskh scripts. It stands on Calle Averroes inside today's Faculty of Arts building and served as a parish church until the 17th century.

    

11. 11Statue of Maimonides

    This statue honours Maimonides, born in Córdoba in 1135 or 1138 and one of the most influential Torah scholars of the Middle Ages. His family left Muslim-ruled Spain shortly after the Almohad conquest of 1148, and he became renowned as an astronomer, philosopher and physician, even serving as personal physician to Saladin. It stands near the synagogue, your next stop.

    

12. 12Córdoba Synagogue

    Finished in 1315, this small synagogue is the only one in Córdoba that escaped destruction, and its stucco walls carry Hebrew verses from the Psalms and other books of the Bible. After the Jews were expelled in 1492 it became a hospital for people with rabies, and from 1588 a shoemakers' guild chapel. In 1935 the first Jewish prayer service in 443 years was held here, and since 1985 it has been a museum.

    

13. 13Casa de Sefarad

    Facing the synagogue, this museum and cultural centre opened in 2006 in a 14th-century Jewish house in the heart of the Judería. Its nine rooms cover Sephardic life, from the expulsion and dispersal of the 15th century to Ladino, the language Sephardic Jews built on Old Castilian with words from Catalan, Aragonese, Hebrew, Turkish, Greek and Arabic. There are rooms on Maimonides, the Inquisition and Sephardic music, where instruments, scores and QR codes let you hear traditional songs.

    

14. 14Gate of Almodóvar

    This gate of Arab origin, rebuilt in the 14th century, is the oldest and least altered of the three that survive from Córdoba's medieval wall. It takes its name from the old road to Almodóvar del Río. Outside it, the Calle Cairuán promenade runs along the wall, where an old Jewish cemetery once lay, with statues of two famous Cordobans: the Roman philosopher Seneca, inaugurated in 1965, and the Muslim polymath Averroes, two years later.

    

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