The Great Mosque

John had learned his lesson on this trip with things being closed

when the group wanted to go and he had checked the night before and found out that a bishop was visiting this morning and the “cathedral” would be closed in the morning, so we took a chance that it was finally open and entered the patio of oranges inside the 

 walls.  I completely love the Moorish devotion to garden spaces and running water, lacy stonework and this was present here as well.  We got our tickets and strolled around letting some of the crowd of tours disperse at the door before going in.  We walked 

 around the whole courtyard and yet, you still didn’t get a sense for how big the interior space was going to be when you went in.  Every inch is covered in white and red arches that fall away into space as far as the eye can see.  It’s a disorienting and enchanting 

detail that sets this place apart from any religious space I’ve ever been in.  The Catholics built a cathedral inside the Mosque in order to save it from being demolished as a Muslim site and even though the cathedral part of the space is boring and a waste of the 

 grandness, at least it saved the rest of the area.  It would have been perfect if they had tried to make the cathedral part match the Moorish architecture at all, but they went white and gold baroque, which was very jarring and ugly.  We walked throughout the whole

 place and Oscar got to run around hugging the marble columns because they felt cool.  Even with all of the tour groups in there, there was plenty of space to move around.  It was interesting because the foundation of the Mosque was built on a Roman 

basilica and used the previous columns and then others added to the original building throughout the years.  John said that the space was as moving to him as the Sistine Chapel, but I didn’t feel that.  I loved seeing it and I thought that it was a great space, but it made 

 me sad.  That we have to destroy what came before us, that we can’t have two religions in the same place, or two peoples that can be nice to each other.  Here we are in the Jewish ghetto, in a Mosque that had taken over a basilica and then was made a 

 Cathedral again so that the inquisition could move in and kill the Jews.  It was just a sad history in such a beautiful space.  I would like to believe that you would walk into something so beautiful and see goodness in a people who built it, a commonness with others 

 instead of divisiveness.  But that doesn’t seem to happen much in human history and we seem to just be repeating the same stuff over and over because here we are still with Muslim and Christian and Jewish peoples still at war.  And all of this just made me sad in this

  space.  Muhammad’s arm used to be kept as a relic in this mosque and they believe that is why the Moors were never defeated until the 1400’s, don’t know where the arm is now, but there is a huge reliquary in the treasure room that the Christian’s have and believe 

 that they used to beat the Moors, but we couldn’t find out what it was and I still can’t find it on google.  Don’t know what was in that huge gold contraption, but it’s the biggest reliquary we’ve ever seen and it should be something like the crown of thorns or something 

 really important.  We headed back out into the sun and it had warmed up a lot since we entered.  We headed down to the river in order to see the Roman bridge and the Alcazar that is down the street.  Sat down in a space of shade to feed Oscar and ran into 

 another philosopher from University of Southern California.  After talking for a bit, we headed on to find Seneca.  I got wifi on the phone for a second and was able to see that it was by a particular 

gate that leads into the Jewish quarter and we found a huge map on the street that listed everything alphabetically.  This helped immensely point us in the right direction and when we took off the right way, we ran into the sign on the street pointing the way to 

 Seneca.  Past the parking garage, Averros again and then 100 meters up, Seneca.  He was right there all along and we were able to get right back to the car and on the road to Madrid.