Cordoba
Córdoba Adds to Its Allure
Córdoba Adds to Its Allure
IT’S easy to dismiss Córdoba as a quick stop on your way to somewhere else. After all, a lot of visitors do just that — sweeping through this Andalusian city on a whirlwind tour of its historic sites (ones that have earned it designation as a Unesco World Heritage Site) as they head toward Seville or other parts of southern Spain.
But those transitory visitors are missing out on a lot. The opening of the city’s first five-star hotel at the end of this month — along with a surprising density of stylish restaurants and bars in recently revitalized neighborhoods well off the beaten tourist track — may be enough to convince some visitors to stay a bit longer.
But for starters there are the glorious monuments like the Roman bridge built by Emperor Augustus in the first century B.C., later rebuilt by the Moors, and then further embellished with a triumphal arch in honor of the Catholic king, Philip II, in 1571 (and currently undergoing yet another face-lift).
And then there are all the splendid buildings that sprang up at the height of Al Andalus, the mighty Moorish Empire that reigned in Spain from 711 to 1492. Córdoba reached its apogee then as the capital of the western caliphate — the largest and most cosmopolitan metropolis in Europe, with systems for running water and street lights, a multicultural population and vast libraries where Arabic, Latin and Greek manuscripts were preserved and translated, often by Jews learned in all three languages.
That rich history is easily evoked today among the jumble of narrow, crooked streets bordered by the whitewashed walls of the Judería, the former Jewish quarter that spreads out around the Mezquita, the city’s grand mosque and easily its most famous monument. In an act of medieval urban planning that would have benefited many an overheated modern city, the neighboring streets zig and zag randomly to prevent even a shaft of summer’s white-hot sunlight from ever hitting their cobblestone surfaces, now worn smooth over the centuries. The houses themselves follow the same logic and meander around tiny patios planted with sheltering orange trees or festooned with flowers during the spring festivals that draw crowds in May.
But it is the Mezquita, begun in 785 and vastly expanded in the 10th century, that continues to astound visitors. In 1523, it was rather awkwardly modified with the imposition of an enormous Baroque cathedral amid the Mezquita’s seemingly infinite indoor forest of 850 marble, jasper and granite columns. A nearby medieval synagogue maintains traces of its original ninth-century polychrome decoration. And in the luxuriant gardens of the adjacent Alcázar of the Catholic Kings, a fortified palace overlooking the Guadalquivir River, Columbus made his case to Ferdinand and Isabella that he could sail west to the Indies.
The
city of Jerusalem has occupied a central role in the world’s religious
and political history and has drawn people from all over the world to
its sacred sites. With a turbulent past and present, it lies at the
heart of the protracted Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This juried
exhibit features works by twelve artists in a variety of media that
speak to Jerusalem’s complex historical, religious and emotional
significance and that consider the need for a just and peaceful
solution to the conflict, recognizing the rights of Palestinians in the
city. 
