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A competition that opens private houses, and a mosque with a cathedral in it
Córdoba's Fiesta de los Patios runs for about a fortnight in May, and what makes it unusual is that the courtyards are not public spaces. They are the interior yards of ordinary lived-in houses, and for those two weeks the families who own them open the street door and let strangers walk in, for nothing. There is a competition with prizes, which is where the concurso comes from, and it is old enough and well enough kept that UNESCO added it to its intangible cultural heritage list in 2012. The courtyard itself is worth understanding as engineering rather than decoration. A patio is shaded by the building around it, planted heavily so the leaves transpire and cool the air, usually holds a well or a fountain, and is whitewashed to reflect heat. In a city that regularly passes forty-five degrees — Córdoba is among the hottest places in Europe — that combination is the difference between a house being habitable in August and not. The pots on the walls, which look ornamental, are there because there is no ground to plant in. And they are watered by hand every single day, often twice, which is the labour behind the thing tourists photograph. Then there is the Mezquita, which is the reason most people come. It was built as a mosque from the eighth century onwards and expanded repeatedly until it held one of the largest prayer halls in the Islamic world — the forest of double arches in red and white that appears on every poster of Spain. After Córdoba was taken in 1236 it became a cathedral, and in the sixteenth century a full Renaissance cathedral nave was built into the middle of it, which the city council of the time opposed. So the building is genuinely both things at once, and what to call it is a live argument: the Church calls it the Catedral, the sign says Mezquita-Catedral, and most people in Spain say la Mezquita. A practical note. Córdoba is forty-five minutes from Seville by AVE and under two hours from Madrid, which makes it the easiest day trip in Andalusia — and if you are going in May for the patios you will be sharing them with a great many people, so go early. In July and August, go nowhere at all between two and six.