Es totalmente evocador detenerse unos instantes, respirar los aromas indescifrables que por allí transitan, mientras escuchamos el sonido del agua que recorre las acequias y suspendemos nuestra mirada en el brillo de alguno de los frutos.

It is said that after the Hiroshima bomb, a Japanese Jesuit requested some seeds of the orange trees of the Mosque courtyard and with them created a garden dedicated to the memory of the victims.

A column forest

When one accesses inside the mosque is invaded for a few minutes by a state of reverie, divine confusion, caused by the vision in gloom of something that resembles a forest.A Floresta with more than eight hundred columns-many, but nothing comparable to the thousand that came to have centuries ago-from granite, jaspe and marble, joined by three hundred and sixty-five double horseshoe arches.Each capitel and each column are different and seem to be suspended in a loophole that someone called space-time.

Some columns have their own intrahistory.In one of them there is a carved cross, the legend defends that it was made by a Christian captive and that forged it with one of its nails.Nearby there is another protected by a screen, since visitors struggled to scratch it with a currency because it gave off an intense smell of sulfur.The mentiseros of the city claimed that their support was in the depths of hell.

One of the most important precepts of Islam is that quibla must be oriented towards Mecca, however, in the Cordoba Mosque the wall is arranged towards the Guadalquivir River.It is enough to access the application of the compass of our smartphones to verify that the decline of the needle is 157º is, much higher than the 57º that marks the preceptual assignment.

In the lush of the columns there is a deforested zone, the Christian cathedral.It highlights a beautiful and ornate masonry, located at two levels, of an incomparable beauty and carved in mahogany wood from some of the Caribbean Sea Islands.Next to the pulpit of the main chapel there is a white ox that, according to legend, was used by Muslims to take the columns there.When they downloaded the last the animal collapsed dying immediately.To honor his work the architect ordered to build this sculpture.

It is said that when Carlos V contemplated for the first time the main chapel could not unless exclaiming the following:

Around the cathedral there are almost forty chapels, being the one of Villaviciosa the most beautiful, with its lucernarium and its spectacular archery.In another of them- that of San Bartolomé- the poet Luis de Góngora is buried.

The New Carteya Leone

Before Califal, Córdoba had a Roman past.During that time a temple was built, of which a few columns remain as a vestige, the indelible footprint of a splendid past.It seems to be, at least to that conclusion the experts have arrived, that their cult was dedicated to the divinized emperors and that the temple could be distinguished from the entrance way to the city.

If time and forces allow it, we will end our tour leading our steps to the archaeological museum.From its magnificent collection, above all, the so -called green and manganese calaryIt is the representation of caliphal dignity).

We will stop just a few minutes to contemplate the Iberian Exvotes, offerings that were deposited in the sanctuaries (eyes, teeth, legs) to thank or request divine favors and in the Iberian sculpture of white limestone.An archaeological wonder of the fourth century to.of C to which a funeral function is presumed and that we cannot stop admiring on our trip to Córdoba.