Alcázar de los Reyes Cristianos, Córdoba

17 05 2023

Alcázar de los Reyes Cristianos

I did this one just for fun. There are a few minor gps glitches on it.

The Alcázar is a stone’s throw from the Mezquita-Catedral. Admission at the time I went was 5 euros. They have in the evenings a spectacular show with lights and music. It starts around 9.00pm and costs 14 euros.
It’s worth seeing and below is enclosed some history of the place.

In addition to being a summary of the history of Cordoba, the Alcázar de los Reyes Cristianos is a stage where capital episodes of the history of Spain were created. The current building was ordered to be built by Alfonso XI in 1328. Since 1236, the year of the Christian conquest of the city by Ferdinand III, it had been a royal residence. In Roman times it had the character of a fortress, benefiting from its privileged location on the banks of the Guadalquivir River, and in the period of the Muslim presence it was part of the set of buildings that constituted the Umayyad fortress. Throughout its history it has played very diverse functions: in the Modern Age it was the seat of the Inquisition, from 1822 to 1931 it was a prison and later hosted military installations until its cession to the City Council of Córdoba in 1955.
The Alcázar is a defensive complex that moves away from the typological canons of the Arab fortresses, a constructive landmark of the military architecture of the Christian Reconquest in Córdoba. For ten years, from this space the strategy of the conquest of the kingdom of Granada was organized, so the Catholic Monarchs spent various periods in it. In fact, one of his daughters, the Infanta Maria, future Queen of Portugal, was born here, and conversations with Christopher Columbus took place prior to his first trip to America.
The Alcázar forms an almost square enclosure with its vertices protected by towers. Alfonso XI wanted to create a perfect architectural unity that referred to European Gothic art in a city that for centuries had been subject to Muslim power, making a castle-palace antagonistic to the nearby Mosque. Among its towers, the main one, located to the northeast, is that of the Tribute, so called because it was the place where it was sworn to defend the fortress and where the proclamations of the kings were made. On the upper floor is the main room or reception room, which has a vault with ribs that rest on capitals carved with plant motifs of French influence. Under it is the cistern or cistern that supplied water to the royal baths. Crowned with battlements topped in prisms like those of the rest of the building, next to it is a small tower higher, with balconies and hipped roof, where those condemned to death by the Inquisition were hanged before the people.
To the northwest is the Lion Tower, the main access to the Campo Santo de los Mártires. It is the most archaic of the set, of square section, with two floors and wide strips of Almohad type. In its four outer faces it is topped with terraces and battlements. Inside, both floors are covered by slender ribbed vaults with pointed arches and ribs molded in Cordoba stone. The tower owes its name to one of the gargoyles that it preserves on the upper floor.
The Tower of the Inquisition or the Gardens is located to the southwest and is later than the previous ones and has a circular plan. On the outside it has ashlars with rope and blight, crowned with a prismatic octagonal brick body. Inside it has three floors with rooms covered with domes of half orange. This tower served as an archive for centuries. Part of its interior houses the Moorish Courtyard, an example of a distinctly Muslim rectangular section. A stucco plinth, with drawings of castles and lions and Arab laceries, ran along part of its walls.
The three towers communicate with each other by battlements protected by battlements or prisms of stone ashlars and intermediate openings. Of the fourth tower there is no reference other than that provided by old engravings. It was originally called Torre de la Paloma or Torre de la Vela.
On the interior floor, attached to the north wall of the building and under the Hall of Mosaics, are the baths or rooms dedicated to the baths of the king, possibly from the time of Alfonso XI. It is accessed by a small courtyard towards the changing room area and in the following three rooms the traditional thermal processes of Roman origin collected by the Muslims take place consecutively: the cold room, the temperate room and the steam and hot water room, next to an adjoining area in which were the oven and the boiler for hot water, which ran through conduits of baked clay through the floor and walls. The walls are made of hard mud and part of the original pavement with large marble slabs is preserved.
In the Alcázar you can see artistic pieces found in the subsoil of the city. It highlights the collection of Roman mosaics that decorate the walls of the old chapel of the Inquisition, made in the eighteenth century and currently known as the Hall of Mosaics, scene of different municipal events throughout the year. This set is a valuable exponent of the musivario art of the second and third centuries AD. Found in the basement of the Plaza de la Corredera in 1959, in the works of the food market, they come from a rich Roman mansion and exhibit a suggestive variety of figurative and geometric motifs, some of them of great development in Western culture such as that of Polyphemus and Galatea. Also relevant is the great Roman sarcophagus of the third century AD. C., whose main motif is the door of Hades or the afterlife and which was found in the Huerta de San Rafael in 1958.
The primitive Huerta del Alcázar gave rise to the gardens that the visitor can contemplate today, and that occupy approximately 55,000 square meters. Species of the most varied native plants, always within the tradition of the Arab garden (palm trees, cypresses, orange trees, lemon trees ...), alternate with fountains and ponds, creating a unique and representative space of the Cordoban culture. The large ponds on the upper floor were made in the nineteenth century.
The Alcázar was classified as a Historical Monument in 1931 and is integrated into the area declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1994. More information about the Alcázar de los Reyes Cristianos at
http://www.alcazardelosreyescristianos.cordoba.es/