UNESCO sites in Cordoba – A Luxury Travel Blog : A Luxury Travel Blog

Within 1.5 hours of home I can be in the centre of Cordoba and I often am. I’m lucky, I know. Cordoba is Andalusia’s most northern province. Vast swathes of sierras and pasture land used for the grazing of black pigs for Spain’s famous jamon meet the more northerly regions of Extremadura and Castilla-La Mancha.

It’s not to the natural areas that I’m taking you to today but the city. The historical city which is said to have been founded by the Phonenicians in the days when the huge River Guadalquivir could be navigated from the Atlantic Ocean as far as Cordoba.

Under Roman occupation it flourished. Trading in olive oil, wool and minerals. Its riches were spent on building beautiful palaces and the enormous the Temple of Claudio Marcelo. After the decline of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, Vandals then Visigoths gained footholds before the city fell to the Moors around the 8th century.

It’s the legacy of the Moors, Cordoba’s…