Mezquita & Puente Romano / Great Mosque and Roman Bridge, Córdoba

Córdoba: Picture of the Mezquita and Roman Bridge at Nightfall

Poster prints of Córdoba, Spain, for sale online at www.PanoramaSpain.com
Technical Details
Panorama composed of 5 scenes, each comprising 3 shots with exposure bracketting of +/-2 stops

Date: 9th May 2010, 9:30pm
Camera: Canon ESO 450D
Focal Lenght: 55mm
F-Stop: F7.1
Shutter Speed: 1.3, 2.5 & 5 seconds (HDR)
White Balance: Tungsten light (approx 3200K)
Software: PTGUI Pro for panorama stitching and HDR processing
Background
Known officially as the Cathedral of Córdoba (Andalucia, Spain) but more popularly known as the Mezquita (and in English as the Great Mosque) this monument, along with the Alhambra in Granada, is one of the two most famous legacies of the Moorish occupation of Spain (711 to 1492). Construction of the Mezquita was begun in 784 by Abd ar-Rahman, founder of the Umayyad Emirate of Córdoba on the site of the Christian Visigothic church of St. Vincent which had been constructed around a century earlier. The Mezquita was extended over a period of two centuries to accommodate the ever increasing number of Muslim converts living in Córdoba as it became the centre of the Muslim dynasty which ruled the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa.
Since 1236, when Muslim rule in Cordoba ended with the capture of the city by King Ferdinand III of Castile, the building has been used as a Christian church. In 1523 work began on the construction of a renaissance Cathedral inside the building of the Mezquita. This is the taller, central part of the structure seen in the photograph.
This panoramic view of the Mezquita in Córdoba also shows the river Guadalquivir and Roman Bridge (Puente Romano), originally constructed in the 1st Century AD under the rule of the Roman emperor Augustus but extensively remodelled since. The last major renovation of the bridge was completed in 2008.
See also: Mihrab in Mezquita de Córdoba