Córdoba - San Nicolás de la Villa

Córdoba shares its history with many cities in Southern Spain. It was Carthaginian and Roman (from 260BC on), later it belonged to the Byzantine Empire for two decades, was looted by the Vandals before the Visigoths conquered it in 572. In 711 it was taken by the by the Umayyad army and became a provincial capital.
At that time a Christian church erected by the Visigoths was on the site, it was divided and shared by Muslims and Christians. In 784 the Christian half was purchased by Emir Abd al-Rahman I, who then demolished the church and started to build the grand mosque of Córdoba on its ground. The Mezquita reached its current dimensions in 987 with the completion of the outer naves and courtyard. It covers an area of more than 23.000 m².

But there is much more than the breathtaking Mezquita.

San Nicolás de la Villa dates back to the 13th century and is one of the twelve "Fernandine" churches built after the conquest by Ferdinand III of Castile, in Gothic-Mudéjar style, although it was completed only in the following centuries, with many renovations.

The construction of the tower began in the period of the Catholic Monarchs on the remains of an earlier Islamic minaret.