Photos

This is one of the Entrances to the Great Mosque that is now colosed.
The Great Mosque of Cordoba was considered a wonder of the medieval world by both Muslims and Christians. Built on a Visigothic site, which was probably the site of an earlier Roman temple, the Great Mosque of Cordoba was begun between 784 and 786 during the reign of 'Abd al-Rahman I, who escaped from Syria to the Iberian Peninsula after his family was massacred by a rival political dynasty.
The Mezquita is regarded as the one of the most accomplished monuments of Islamic architecture. It was described by the poet Muhammad Iqbal:
"Sacred for lovers of art, you are the glory of faith,
You have made Andalusia pure as a holy land!"

After conquering Cordoba in 1236 - the Spanish Reconquista, Ferdinand III king of Castile consecrated the Great Mosque as the city's cathedral. The Christian population of Cordoba used the former mosque with relatively minor changes for the next three hundred years. In the early 16th century the Bishop and Canons of the cathedral proposed the construction of a new cathedral, and proposed to demolish the mosque in order to build it. The opposition of the townspeople to the proposed destruction of the building led to the unprecedented decision, endorsed by the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, to insert an entire Gothic "chapel" into the very heart of the former Great Mosque. The result is an uneasy and controversial juxtaposition: the soaring forms of a Gothic cathedral rise from the very centre of the comparatively low, sprawling prayer hall whose architectural vocabulary is rooted in the forms of classical antiquity.

Since the early 2000s, Spanish Muslims have lobbied the Roman Catholic Church to allow them to pray in the cathedral. The Muslim campaign has been rejected on multiple occasions, by both Spanish Catholic authorities, and the Vatican.In 2010 there was a violent incident over the matter.