Spain’s iconic Great Mosque of Cordoba narrowly escaped a Notre Dame-style disaster – here’s why it’s a World Heritage site
A FIRE broke out at Cordoba’s historic mosque-turned-cathedral at 9pm on Friday, 8 August, but it was quickly extinguished by firefighters.
Mayor of Cordoba, Jose Maria Bellido, told Cadena television “The monument is saved. There will be no spread, it will not be a catastrophe, let’s put it that way.”
ABC and other newspapers reported that the blaze began around 9 p.m. after a robotic sweeping machine on the site caught fire.
Considered a jewel of Islamic architecture, the flames evoked memories of the blaze that destroyed Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in 2019.
Between the 8th and 10th centuries, the city’s Muslim ruler, Abd al-Rahman, constructed the mosque on the site where a church had previously stood.
A Statement of Outstanding Universal Value (SOUV) said: “Cordoba’s period of greatest glory began in the 8th century after the Moorish conquest.
“Some 300 mosques and innumerable palaces and public buildings were built to rival the splendours of Constantinople, Damascus and Baghdad.”
Following the Christian reconquest of Spain in the 13th century, the building was transformed into a cathedral, undergoing architectural changes over the following centuries.
The centre piece of the former Islamic city, as joined the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1984, as a monument of Islamic religious architecture and advanced building techniques.
Over the centuries, renovations have showcased a rare blend of cultural influences in Islamic and Christian architecture, with features like double arches above the naves, high ceilings, and size.
The monument is a combination of stone and brick, that has been re-used and integrated in from previous constructions, leading out to a famous courtyard, known as the Patio de los Naranjos.
“Today, the Patio de los Naranjos is a pleasant courtyard-garden presided over by the belltower of the Cathedral. It is presided over by a fountain, and has a lush vegetation of orange, cypress and palm trees,” says Cordoba City Council.
Each year 1.5 million tourists visit the Mosque-Cathedral in Cordoba, to see the great legacy of the of Muslim dynasty in Southern Spain.
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