There is this thing that we humans do whenever we conquer other lands and peoples. I mean aside from killing, expelling, or subjugating the people who were conquered. We desecrate the holy sites of the conquered. It happens everywhere. The longer a place has been occupied by human beings the more of it we see.

When we were traveling through Turkey five years ago we noticed that all the frescoes in the old Byzantine churches had the faces scratched off. In places like the Hagia Sophia, the golden mosaics of the Christians were simply plastered over in the service of turning the place into a mosque. In our travels throughout Portugal and Spain, most all of the churches and cathedrals are built on the ruins of the old mosques or synagogues that fell during the Reconquista.

The Mezquita of Córdoba is almost an exception to this rule. I’d only ever read about this place so was wholly unprepared for what I saw when I walked through the door:

In the 9th century Córdoba was considered the “city of the three cultures” because Muslims, Jews, and Christians all lived there in peace. It was the biggest city in Western Europe, with active artisan and agricultural communities.

Alas, the center cannot hold. The peaceful caliphate that ruled over Córdoba was overthrown by a much less peaceful general, and when that general’s son died everything turned up anarchy. The city was looted by Berbers, and it declined steadily after that.

But the Mezquita remained intact. Even after the Reconquista in 1236. The new Catholic monarchs simply repurposed the space as a church, but didn’t change its core architecture. That is, until 1536, when King Carlos I gave permission to have a cathedral built inside the Mezquita. This required demolishing a large swath of the interior.

In all, 437 columns were destroyed to make room for the cathedral . The cathedral itself is nice enough, but it’s also kind of terrible.

So there you have it. A holy place changes hands and its character changes with it. It happens over and over again across time. The tragedy of it is that so much art and culture is lost in the process. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just leave beautiful things alone?

The Mezquita is still a powerful symbol of Islam in Spain. The Muslim community here has petitioned Rome to allow them to pray there, but the Vatican has not yet consented.

It’s a sad state of affairs, and I’m sure we’d be forgiven for despairing. But then, as we walked back through the forest of arches, we were met with a bit of perspective. Lest any Muslim or Christian get too cocky about who really has the valid claim to the space, we were reminded that the Romans were here first:

Logistics: There is a one hour window, from 8:30 to 9:30 in the morning, when it is free to enter the Mezquita. Even though there was a line to get in, there still were far fewer people than we saw wandering around in the middle of the day. You will get kicked out after that hour, so be prompt. If you want to spend more time inside you’ll need to buy a ticket. We found that an hour was enough, but probably would have lingered longer had we had the option.