Andalucia
-- A Place in the Sun’s Everything Spain magazine
Takes you right into the heart of southern Spain by uncovering the delights of Granada, Seville and Córdoba, the sparkling coastal resorts and the magnificent landscape – visits Seville, a city of drama and passion, home to those most Spanish creations, flamenco and tapas, and the greatest gothic cathedral in the world, La Giralda – explores spiritual Córdoba, with its Great Mosque and medieval quarters, and refined and wistful Granada, with its extraordinary garden-hung Alhambra palace and spectacular views of the Sierra Nevada – relaxes on the best of southern Spain’s beaches and seaside towns, travels over to Gibraltar and shows you the best places to unwind with a glass of sherry
Features: dynamic two-colour layout for navigation; a magazine style, combining photography, itineraries and the author's personal take on the country; extensive listings of hotels and restaurants - all personally visited and recommended for a really local flavour; and, top 'Don't Miss' sights at the start of every regional chapter.
Excerpt: Córdoba: La Mezquita
La Mezquita is the local name for Abd ar-Rahman’s Great Mosque. Mezquita means ‘mosque’ and even though the building has officially been a cathedral for more than 750 years, no one could ever mistake its origins. Abd ar-Rahman I, founder of a new state, felt it necessary to construct a great religious monument for his capital. As part of his plan, he also wished to make it a centre of pilgrimage to increase the sense of divorce from eastern Islam; Mecca was at the time held by his Abbasid enemies.
Islam was never entirely immune to the exaltation of holy relics, and there is a story that Abd ar-Rahman had an arm of Mohammed to legitimize his mosque as a pilgrimage site. The site, at the centre of the city, had originally held a Roman temple of Janus, and later a Visigothic church. Only about one-third of the mosque belongs to the original. Successive enlargements were made by Abd ar-Rahman II, al-Hakim, and al-Mansur. ...click here to read the rest
Dana Facaros and Michael Pauls can be reached at: michel.pauls@wanadoo.fr
