The weekend of November 9th, I visited Córdoba for a trip coordinated by my professor for a class called Multicultural Spain. My professor is also my Barcelona study abroad program director, so it was essentially a trip of 19 students from my university who are all in the Multicultural Spain class. Although I was only there for about two and a half days, I got to see some historically important places and experience the local culture.
To give a little historical context, something that differentiates Spain from the rest of the European countries is that it was under Muslim power for centuries. Córdoba is located in a southern region of Spain called Andalusia, and it was once a vibrant Islamic cultural center. In fact, it was actually the capital of the Caliphate of Córdoba, a major Islamic power and cultural center in the world. A couple centuries before Islamic rule, Córdoba was also under Roman power, so there are some Roman relicts in the area, such as some Roman columns that were once part of a temple.
A fascinating building I saw was the Great Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba. The construction of the mosque began in 786, but it was expanded by different rulers for the next couple of centuries.
