Plaça de Catalunya in Barcelona

10 November 2023 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General Reading Time:  7 minutes

© Tango7174/cc-by-sa-4.0

© Tango7174/cc-by-sa-4.0

Plaça de Catalunya (meaning in English “Catalonia Square”; sometimes referred to as Plaza de Cataluña, its Spanish name) is a large square in central Barcelona that is generally considered to be both its city centre and the place where the old city (Barri Gòtic and Raval, in Ciutat Vella) and the 19th century-built Eixample meet.   read more…

Toledo Cathedral

15 October 2023 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General Reading Time:  10 minutes

Toledo Cathedral from Plaza del Ayuntamiento © Nikthestunned/cc-by-sa-3.0

Toledo Cathedral from Plaza del Ayuntamiento © Nikthestunned/cc-by-sa-3.0

The Primatial Cathedral of Saint Mary of Toledo (Spanish: Catedral Primada Santa María de Toledo), otherwise known as Toledo Cathedral, is a Roman Catholic church in Toledo, Spain. It is the seat of the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Toledo.   read more…

Great Synagogue of Barcelona

12 October 2023 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Museums, Exhibitions Reading Time:  7 minutes

Menorah © Nikodem Nijaki/cc-by-sa-3.0

Menorah © Nikodem Nijaki/cc-by-sa-3.0

The Ancient Synagogue of Barcelona (Catalan: Sinagoga Major de Barcelona; Spanish: Sinagoga Mayor de Barcelona) is believed to be an ancient synagogue located in the Jewish quarter of Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. Medieval rabbi Shlomo ben Adret, leader of Spanish Jewry of his time, was the rabbi of the synagogue for 50 years during the late 13th century.   read more…

Historic centre of Córdoba

8 October 2023 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, UNESCO World Heritage Reading Time:  10 minutes

Historic centre of Córdoba © Jose María Ligero Loarte/cc-by-sa-4.0

Historic centre of Córdoba © Jose María Ligero Loarte/cc-by-sa-4.0

The historic centre of Córdoba, Andalusia, Spain is one of the largest of its kind in Europe. In 1984, UNESCO registered the Mosque–Cathedral of Córdoba as a World Heritage Site. A decade later, it expanded the inscription to include much of the old town. The historic centre has a wealth of monuments preserving large traces of Roman, Arabic, Islam, and Christian times. It is important to understand the mutual interactions between Muslims and Christians, Christians and Muslims in their entirety, because this is a prerequisite for understanding today’s Andalusia in its complexity and diversity.   read more…

Córdoba Synagogue

7 October 2023 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Museums, Exhibitions, UNESCO World Heritage Reading Time:  8 minutes

West wall © Américo Toledano/cc-by-sa-3.0

West wall © Américo Toledano/cc-by-sa-3.0

Córdoba Synagogue (Spanish: Sinagoga de Córdoba) is a historic edifice in the Jewish Quarter of Córdoba (part of the UNESCO World Heritage “Historic centre of Córdoba“), Spain, built in 1315. The synagogue’s small size points to it having possibly been the private synagogue of a wealthy man. It is also possible that Córdoba’s complex of buildings was a yeshivah, kollel, or study hall. Another possibility is that this was the synagogue of a trade guild, which converted a residence or one of the work rooms into the synagogue. The synagogue was decorated according to the best Mudejar tradition.   read more…

Mirador del Río on Lanzarote

16 September 2023 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Architecture Reading Time:  5 minutes

Cafe at Mirador del Río © Holger Uwe Schmitt/cc-by-sa-4.0

Cafe at Mirador del Río © Holger Uwe Schmitt/cc-by-sa-4.0

Mirador del Río is a viewpoint on an approximately 475-metre-high (1,560 ft) escarpment called Batería del Río in the north of the Canarian island of Lanzarote.   read more…

Festival of the Patios Cordobeses in Spain

17 August 2023 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Living, Working, Building, UNESCO World Heritage Reading Time:  6 minutes

© Rafael Tello/cc-by-sa-4.0

© Rafael Tello/cc-by-sa-4.0

The Festival of the Patios Cordobeses is a patio contest in Córdoba, Andalusia, Spain, held since 1921 and which is generally held during the first and second week of May. The participants decorate and open their patios for free so that they can be visited within the hours established for this purpose. In 1980 they were declared a Festival of National Tourist Interest, and after a long process, they managed to register as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO on December 6, 2012.   read more…

Palma Cathedral

10 August 2023 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General Reading Time:  7 minutes

Interior © José Luis Filpo Cabana/cc-by-3.0

Interior © José Luis Filpo Cabana/cc-by-3.0

The Cathedral of Santa Maria of Palma (Cathedral of St. Mary of Palma), more commonly referred to as La Seu (a title also used by many other churches), is a Gothic Roman Catholic cathedral located in Palma, Mallorca, Spain.   read more…

Mediterranean Region

29 July 2023 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, French Riviera, European Union, Living, Working, Building, Sport, UNESCO World Heritage, Union for the Mediterranean Reading Time:  28 minutes

Monaco © Tobi 87/cc-by-sa-3.0

Monaco © Tobi 87/cc-by-sa-3.0

In biogeography, the Mediterranean Basin, also known as the Mediterranean Region or sometimes Mediterranea, is the region of lands around the Mediterranean Sea that have mostly a Mediterranean climate, with mild to cool, rainy winters and warm to hot, dry summers, which supports characteristic Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub vegetation.   read more…

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