Our sixth stop in Spain was Córdoba. Today it is a moderate-sized city of about 330,000 but in the 10th century, under Moslem rule, it was one of the largest cities in the world and capital of the Caliphate of Córdoba (most of the Iberian peninsula and a bit of North Africa). It was a major cultural and economic center and one of the world’s great centers of learning.

The main reason to come here, for us at least, was the Mezquita de Córdoba, a Cathedral inside a Mosque that’s one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen. It was originally a Christian church, until the Moslems conquered Córdoba in the late 8th century and convert it to a mosque. When Ferdinand III recaptured the city for the Christians in 1236, they start using it as a church again; apparently awed by the mosque’s, well, awesomeness, they initially just modified it for worship services.

In the 16th century, though, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (who was also, confusingly, King Carlos I of Spain) decided they needed a Renaissance cathedral in Córdoba so he had a big section in the middle of the mosque torn out and a big old cathedral just dropped into it. When he saw the finished product he is reported to have said “I have destroyed something unique to the world.”

Destroyed? Yeah, in a way. And yet what’s left is pretty amazing, a Cathedral inside a mosque. You walk into the building and it’s a dark, brooding mosque with hundreds of striped red-and-white arches under a comparatively low ceiling. Humbling and contemplative. Then there are interior walls within which is a bright, brilliant, soaring cathedral with all the gilding and majesty you’d expect from a Renaissance cathedral. Both are stunning. And together they’re, well, unique to the world.

It reminded me of walking around Paris not long after we’d been in Genoa. We loved Genoa in part because of the beautiful narrow winding medieval streets. We love Paris in part because of the beautiful and grand boulevards. Yet those boulevards exist because Emperor Napoleon III had the narrow winding medieval streets torn out. We’d be horrified today if someone ordered something similar, yet it’s what makes Paris Paris. And while destroying the Mosque by dropping a Cathedral in it would not win the votes of historic preservationists today, it created a strange and unique and beautiful piece of architecture.

One more thing about the Mezquita. The entrance fee is about $9, but between 8:30 and 9:30 AM, they let people in for free. Individuals, that is, but not tour groups. So every morning Mark & I would get up, have a quick breakfast, and go there to enjoy the beauty and strangeness without the hordes. The only downside of touring the space was that we were never allowed into the Cathedral itself. You could look in from a couple side areas, but you could never actually go into it or get a view of the whole length of the nave. I don’t know if that was just something closed off for the early morning crowd or what, but while we could walk all around it we could never get in or actually see it very well at all.

An unexpected highlight of Córdoba: the dental care! One night while enjoying tapas at a little place we came to love part of one of Mark’s teeth fell out. So the next morning (instead of a long hike in a nearby national park we’d planned) a woman at the front desk of the hotel recommended a dentist who made an appointment for that morning. After examining him she explained that a 1970s-era metal filling had expanded until it just broke the remaining tooth. So she filled him with novocaine, drilled it out, and put in a new filling. By lunch time he was good as new, and all for about $90. Try to do all that in one morning in the U.S.

Finally, it’s worth noting that we picked a good time to come here. In planning this pass through Spain we hoped it would stay warm long enough to enjoy it before crossing down to Morocco. Well, so far so good; the weather’s been cool but usually pleasant. What we didn’t realize is that Córdoba, it turns out, is the hottest place in all of Europe. Yup, number one. Average daily highs – average – are 98 degrees in July and August with the temperature regularly up in the 100s. The weather was delightfully cool while we were here, though, with intermittent rain. We weren’t complaining, to be sure; a little rain beats the heck out of 100-degree temperatures. And … with a little rain you can get a nice rainbow.

We’re working our way into southern Spain, so out of Madrid we caught a quick 30-minute train down to Toledo. Given Mark’s family’s proximity to Toledo, Ohio, we had lots of good jokes about how this just didn’t seem like the Toledo we knew. Wikipedia, though, was helpful in explaining the difference: “Toledo most commonly refers to Toledo, Ohio or Toledo, Spain (the Spanish city being older, and the American city being named after it.)” Wow, thanks for explaining that.

This Toledo has a long an interesting history and has served as Spain’s capital a few times. It first attained that status on the fall of the Roman empire, when the Visigoths (the western Goths) made it their capital until the Moslems conquered most of the Spanish peninsula in the early 8th century. In the late 11th century Toledo was the first major city recaptured it what became known at the Reconquista, the Christians’ reconquest of Spain that was completed 400 years later when Isabella and Fernando defeated the Moslems in Granada, their last toehold. (The victory in Granada took place in 1492, the same year Isabella and Ferdinand financed Columbus’s first voyage to America and the year they evicted the Jews from Spain. A really big year for them!) Then in the 16th century Charles I made Toledo the capital of his kingdom of Castille.

Toledo is known for a couple things. For me the most interesting is that the city was the home of the artist El Greco from 1577 until his death in 1614. Originally from the island of Crete his formal name was Doménikos Theotokópoulos but he was known both during his life and afterwards as El Greco, the Greek. He was always individualistic and controversial in his lifetime and it wasn’t until the early 20th century that he began to be seen as one of the great artists of Western culture.

These days Toledo has certainly embraced him. There’s the El Greco Museum, to be sure, with a bunch of his paintings, but the Cathedral, an old convent, and another church also have several originals. Interestingly, some of the churches that commissioned work from him now have copies, with the originals in places like Madrid and Chicago. I’d love to understand, for instance, why the The Assumption of the Virgin was painted for the church of Santo Domingo el Antiguo but now resides at the Art Institute of Chicago while the church in Toledo has a copy. Did they just need the money and sell it? Did the fact that El Greco had fallen so far out of favor mean they just gave it away? Gotta figure that out some day.

At any rate, we saw a lot of El Greco and I loved just about all of it. Another thing Toledo has long been known for is the way the old city embraced all three religions in the Middle Ages and later and has been known as the City of Three Cultures. Prior to the expulsion of Jews in 1492, the Jewish quarter made up nearly a third of the city, with Moslems having a large section of their own. Today there is a museum of Jewish culture that’s worth a visit but as far as I can tell the Jewish quarter is pretty much entirely historic; Ferdinand and Isabella were pretty successful in expelling all of them.

So that was Toledo, lots of art and a little history. It’s also known for its steel production and, in particular, the production of swords, but that didn’t interest us much so we didn’t pay attention to it. Oh yeah, and a great trail along the Tagus River for walking and running that goes on for miles and miles. Some day we have to come back and do one of those multi-day hikes. Some day.