The Mezquita-Catedral: 1,300 years in one building

The Mezquita-Catedral draws more visitors than any other monument in Andalusia, and for good reason. Its 856 columns of jasper, marble, and granite form a petrified forest beneath red-and-white arches that have become one of the most recognisable images in European architecture. But the building is stranger and more layered than photographs suggest.

It began as a Visigothic church. In 785, Abd al-Rahman I — an Umayyad prince who had escaped the massacre of his family in Damascus — built a mosque on the site. Over the next two centuries, three further expansions made it the largest mosque in the western Islamic world. After the Reconquista in 1236, it became a cathedral. In 1523, a Renaissance nave was inserted into the middle of the prayer hall, creating an architectural collision that Charles V reportedly described as having "destroyed something unique in the world."

This guide covers everything you need to plan a visit: what to see inside, how to get tickets, when to go, and what to combine it with in the surrounding Judería.