Cordoba's Great Mosque consecrated as cathedral

1236

Ferdinand III ordered the mihrab's qibla wall sealed and altars erected beneath the forest of double-tiered arches that the Umayyads had built two centuries earlier. The mosque became the Cathedral of the Assumption, an architectural palimpsest of faith that still baffles visitors with its layered beauty. Charles V would later insert a Renaissance nave into the hypostyle hall and regret having destroyed something unique.