Corredera Square
The 17th-century Corredera Square is a long rectangle of faded red brick and what seems like too much open space to be put to good use. When it was designed, the architect Antonio Ramos borrowed from the prevailing Baroque themes in Castilla y León to the north. It has a rough quality that is almost endearing, for there is little to look on that is impressive, it appears dirty and one can do little more than wonder about its past. Horse races and bullfights once filled the square. Now there are a few hundred people loitering about, but not anything like the great plazas of Spain that draw the crowds and, as a result, renovations. In one corner, tables are set out for dining and at another end are a few crafts shops and narrow roads leading off through the Jewish quarter. Cars tend to pile up around the fringes, many of them belonging to government workers at the City Hall who, in the days of yore, would have likely overseen the public executions that were frequently carried out in this square.
In the 15th century, horses were shod in the Renaissance Plaza del Potro. The fountain with the colt, from which the square takes its name, was added in the 16th century. A few steps away is La Posada del Potro, an inn that dates to the 14th century and retains much the same look it did then, with wagon wheels leaning against the white brick, lumpy white stucco walls as if they were undergoing repair, a second-floor balcony and rooms trimmed with a heavy, roughhewn wood. Among its former residents was none other than Miguel de Cervantes who wrote and staged scenes here.
Also in the square is the Museo de Julio Romero de Torres Museum. This museum is devoted to the revered Córdoban painter Julio Romero de Torres, who could make a Córdoban woman look like an angel. Four rooms are devoted to his various stages of creativity that culminated with his heavily saturated yet sensitive masterpieces, “La Copla” and “La Chiquita Piconera.”
Museo Arqueológico has eight rooms displaying prehistoric and Roman pieces, including coins, mosaics and sculptures (ground floor); fourth-eighth-century Visigothic pieces along with Muslim relics are shown on the second floor.
La Casa Andalusí is about as close as one can get these days to the more elegant living quarters of Al-Andalus. The patio is colored in ivory with a pebbled mosaic floor while the basement displays some earlier Visigothic traces. The Moorish room is dedicated to relics of this culture, artworks, Arabic coins, clothing and a model of an early printing machine that would have been used during this period to spit out the Koran.
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