Mezquita-Catedral de Cordoba: In the 1500s, the Christian rulers of Spain tried to gracefully convert one of the largest and most elaborate mosques in the Muslim world, the Mezquita, into a Catholic cathedral. The result, a bizarre amalgam of Gothic and Muslim architecture, is an awesomely proportioned cultural compromise that defies categorization. In its 8th-century heyday, the Mezquita was the crowning Muslim architectural achievement in the West, rivaled only by the Mosque at Mecca.

© Copyright 1997-2004 Barbara Boyles and Mark Boyles