The Orange Trees Court (Patio de los Naranjos) in the Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba (Spain)
Orange Trees Court
The court of the muslim mosque was used in a different way by the christians. In
that age; it was used for testing, celebrate trials and for being linked to the Oratory, for praying. With the christians the Oratory is closed because they open the chapels, in the northern of the same. Without being sacred any more the court will be linkadded square to the Cathedral, using it us a garden, eisure space and even cementery.
After Ferdinand III’s The Saint conquest Córdoba in 1236, the Gómez de Alcázar Family apply for burying “Saint Mary’s claustra”. At that period every gallery was farmed by horseshoe archs, with lateral roman archs on the there was a cornice crowning the
complex with a series of almena’s (merlons).
At the beginning of the XVI Century, under Bishop Martín Fernández de Angulo's term of office (1510-1516), Hernán Ruiz I "The Old", then master of the Cathedral, renewed the 3 galleries, made at the age or period of the Caliph Hisham I (757-796). The facades of the court had a different style, divided in the roman archs, peralted and framed with alfiz, where every part was divided by a big machon (pier); this was a semi-cylindric in this below part and polygonal in the upper one. The capitals were reused the ones belonging to muslim
court, or those belonging to the Villaviciosa Chapel.
We know that the orange trees were there since 1512, but we don’t know neither its initial distribution nor its number. Fray Gregorio de Alfaro wrote that at the end of the XVI Century the court had: …un hermoso plantel de naranjos que arrebata la vista de cuantos entran en aquel sagrado templo… (a wonderful court full of orange trees that impressed everyone who entered the court).
The Bishop Francisco de Reinoso y Baeza (1597-1601) ordered to pull down the big walls in the court at the beginning of the next century; he
renewed it, and turned into a garden. We know its distribution at the end of XVII Century thank to Tomás Fernández Moreno: “…todo de piedra menuda… dividido en tres capacísimos cuadros en que hay cerca de ochenta naranjos, unos doce cipreses y tres palmas… Hay también un olivo, y se van poniendo diferentes plantas…” (all with little stones… divided into tree squares, in it there are eighty orange trees twelve cypresses and three palms. Even there is an olive tree). The initial distribution, baroque, it’s similar to that of nowadays. Varying basically in the number of trees.
Text: J.A.S.C.
Traslated by Sara Moretti