EMMA CAPALDI
Emma Capaldi is a rising senior at William & Mary pursuing a double major in Art History and Classical Studies with a concentration in Classical Civilization. Outside of academics, Emma has served as an Orientation Aide helping new students transition to life at William & Mary. She is also a member of the club swim team and a co-editor of Acropolis Magazine, William and Mary’s Art and Art History student publication. In Fall 2021, Emma had the opportunity to expand her studies in Art History beyond the classroom, studying art and architecture in Florence, Italy. After graduation, she is interested in a career in museums and curatorial work.
EXPLORING CULTURAL HERITAGE: INTEGRATION AND ADAPTATION IN THE MEZQUITA OF CÓRDOBA
The Mezquita of Córdoba, Córdoba, Spain, 784-1607, stone masonry.
Cultural heritage management provides means for both preserving architectural sites and rewriting their history. In the case of structures that have endured a stark shift in their function, such as converted religious buildings, restoration efforts can be politically charged, privileging one historical phase over another, or segregating shared heritage into discrete histories.
This paper focuses on the Mezquita of Córdoba to explore how cultural heritage organizations–namely the UNESCO and the Diocese of Córdoba–present the Mezquita in ways that provide a limited view of its entangled history and integrated architecture. Originally built as a mosque in 784 by Abd al-Rahman, founder of the Iberian Umayyad caliphate and survivor of the Abbasid Revolution that overthrew the Ummayad ruling family in Syria, the structure was expanded in stages by subsequent caliphs. Its architecture combined Islamic traditions with Visigothic and Roman elements characteristic of Al-Andalus and consisted of a monumental hypostyle hall. The Christian conquerors of Al-Andalus, rather than destroying the existing mosque and erecting a cathedral for themselves, demonstrated their dominance by adopting an approach of reconsecration and adapting the existing framework to their own needs. Beginning with minimal alterations made to a confined area in the years following reconsecration, later modifications culminated in the realization of Bishop Manrique’s proposal: embedding a Gothic cathedral into the middle of the hypostyle hall in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Yet despite this substantial alteration, the architects in charge of materializing the Bishop's plan made conscious efforts to stylistically unite the cathedral and mosque by preserving as much of the hypostyle hall as possible and implementing traditionally Islamic forms into the new cathedral's design. I argue that from the building’s earliest point of construction to its conversion and successive renovations, its various builders have consistently sought to spatially integrate its distinct parts, further enriching its amalgamation of cultural traditions.