MEDIEVAL SPAIN - MY TOUR DIARY
How to spend a week seeing the greatest sites from Spain's crusading era
I’m back at my desk today after an unusually long time away, but a very wonderful one. I’ve been in the south of Spain, with a group of a couple of dozen history fans, visiting some of the most famous monuments of medieval al-Andalus: that bit of the Iberian peninsula that was ruled, co-habited and fought over by Islamic and Christian powers between eighth century AD and the fifteenth.
Together those eight centuries tell a captivating story of empires rising and falling, and kingdoms coming together then falling apart. I would argue (and do, in one of my books) that this is the region where some of the elemental ideas of crusading took shape from the 1060s and where many actual crusades were subsequently fought.
It’s also a place where the great medieval faiths swirled and intermingled, leaving a legacy today in the language, architecture, food and culture of Andalusia, from the scorching, orange-blossom scented streets of Seville to the cool, snow-capped mountains of the Sierra Nevada.
The trip was organised by my good friends at Author Fan Travel, who put on superb small-group tours with historians and writers. They have forthcoming itineraries with Lucy Worsley, Suzannah Lipscomb and others - as well as a one-off event with me, in Utah, next month. All details on the Author Fan Travel website.
In the meantime, here are some of my highlights of the trip. It’s part travel guide and part photo dump. (All photos were taken with my fair iphone, none are filtered, and all copyright is (C) Dan Jones 2024.)
I hope you enjoy this glimpse of a week spent chasing the Reconquista. You could certainly build your own Spanish history tour around the following destinations - and in fact, I recommend that one day, you do.
1. Seville
Seville’s vast cathedral, with its intricate gothic exterior and great belltower, was converted from a mosque dating back to the days when the city was part of the Almohad Empire: a Berber state that controlled much of southern Spain and north Africa around the turn of the thirteenth century. When the cathedral was completed it was the biggest in the world, trumping even the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople.
Inside the cathedral is Christopher Columbus’ tomb (pictured), as well as a treasury groaning with reliquaries, ceremonial trinkets and other high-quality medieval bling.
Elsewhere in Seville is the Alcazar - a conjunction of Islamic and Christian medieval palaces, and the pavilions preserved from the 1929 Ibero-American world’s fair (the fifth photo, above, shows part of the Plaza de Espana. You’ll recognise a surprising amount of the scenery and architecture from Game of Thrones.
2. Ronda
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