Córdoba

Under Castile, Córdoba became a frontier city, the border of Granada only a short ride to the south. In 1333, while Alfonso XI was away trying to save Gibraltar, a Granadan army raided its countryside and camped across the Roman Bridge, and in the civil war of 1368 the city held for the Trastámara cause against Peter I and his Granadan allies. Alfonso XI raised the church of San Hipólito to mark his victory at the Salado, and he and his father Ferdinand IV were buried there. The Mezquita itself kept its forest of arches until 1523, when the cathedral chapter set a Renaissance nave in its middle over the protests of the city council. Charles V, who had allowed the work, is said to have complained on seeing it that they had destroyed something unique in the world to build what could be built anywhere.