1-343-635 - Art Media/Heritage Images

Arch above the entrance, west façade, Grand Mosque, Cordoba, Spain, 8th-11th Century. Once the largest city of Roman Spain, Cordoba later formed the heart of the western Islamic empire. The city's hour of greatest glory was when it became the capital of the Moorish kingdom of El-Andalus, and this was when work began on the Great Mosque, or Mezquita, which, after several centuries of additions and enlargements, became one of the largest in the Muslim world. After the Spanish recaptured Cordoba in 1236, they built a Christian cathedral in the heart of the mosque complex.