Hands up who knew that the Moors were the medieval North African Arab Muslim inhabitants of al-Andalus (the Iberian Peninsula including the present day Spain and Portugal) who dominated the region for some 800 years from 711AD. Yeah, me neither.
We went to Spain primarily to escape the seemingly never-ending London winter and grey sky. Witness exhibit A: London sky v. Seville sky: 
In the moments we could tear ourselves away from the sunlight and 22 degree warmth (warm enough to take off your jumper – woo hoo!) we learnt a bit about the history of Seville, Cordoba and Granada, as reflected in their main monuments.
In Cordoba they have the twelve hundred year old Mezquita, the grandest and most beautiful mosque built by the Moors. When the Christians ‘reconquested’ the area they left it untouched for some three centuries. Then in 1523 they took another look at it and thought… 'hmmm... something seems to be missing...' Yes, what it really needed was to have its centre demolished and a Roman Catholic cathedral built slap bang in the middle.
Even the ruler who gave this idea the go-ahead (Emperor Carlos V, aka Carlos the Clueless) had second thoughts when he saw the finished product, declaring: ‘You have built what you might have built anywhere, but you have destroyed something that was unique in the world’. You think? And what exactly were you expecting? Also, was space at such a premium? This is not Tokyo we are talking about. Surely an alternative site could have been found, say, I don’t know… anywhere other than in the middle of a pre-existing building? But I guess that wasn’t the point.
Seville is home to the world’s largest cathedral. Although it is commonly thought that St Peter’s Basilica in Rome and St Paul’s in London are bigger, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, on a square foot basis, Seville’s Cathedral wins the title. And you would hope so too, as the main aim when it was being envisaged was ‘a building on so magnificent a scale that prosperity will believe we were mad’. You wouldn’t naturally think that entering into a project with the express aim of having the world question your mental health was a good idea, but there you go, it can actually pay off.
For the builders of Christian churches the prevailing design principle seems to be the more ornamentation, decoration and decadence the better. On the other hand Islamic design emphasizes simplicity, harmony, order and symmetry of form, evident in the Moorish palaces of the Alcazar in Seville and Royal Palace in the Alhambra in Granada. Carlos V also ordered the demolition of a wing of rooms in this latter building in order to construct yet another grandiose Renaissance palace. For some reason he lost interest in the project. The palace was never finished and he left Granada altogether. Who knows why (maybe the sun went to his head) but I know where I'd prefer to be right now.
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