Zaragoza

2 Jan 2012

This morning, our first order of business was to get some breakfast! Since it's Monday, a lot of bars/restaurants were closed. However, we did come across a place that had Brazilian breakfast croquetas.

After breakfast, we made our way to La Aljafería--the Arabic (and later Christian) palace in Zaragoza.


The Aljafería was built during the 11th century under Arabic rule of Spain. However, in 1118, the city was conquered by Alfonso I.

The palace is most famous for it's mudéjar style. The mudéjar style surfaced after the reconquest of Spain. There were some Arabic people who decided to stay in Spain and live under Christian rule. The word mudéjar refers to this group of people who stayed.

This style is a mixture of Islamic and Christian styles.  This style uses a lot of Islamic motifs but uses them in combination with Gothic and Romanesque styles. The mudéjar style typically uses brick, tiling, or woodworking--typical of Islamic style.

The picture on the left shows some of this influence. The bottom part of the room is very Islamic in design. However, you can see the ceiling is clearly more Gothic/Romanesque.

For example, as you can see in the picture above, the stone arch obviously looks fairly Gothic--with the little gargoyle peeking out. However, the decorative motifs here are influenced by nature and are much more Islamic in design.

After our visit to the Arabic palace, we ran into an old Spanish couple (yayos or grandparents as they are called here) who wanted to give us all sorts of advice. The man used to be a firefighter and was telling us stories about some of the big fires he fought back in his salad days. The woman kept telling us that we needed to look up the Instituto Cervantes in the United States so that we could learn Spanish... You know, proper Spanish grammar and all that.

Later, we met up with someone from Zaragoza. He took us around to all the typical sites.

Our first stop was the Basilica of Our Virgin of the Pillar. Yesterday, I wrote a little bit about the story behind the construction of the church. Today, I got to go inside to check it out.

The inside is gorgeous with paintings done by Goya! Unfortunately, you can't take pictures of the inside.

There was a really long line to see the pillar. People go up to the pillar, kneel, say a quick prayer, and kiss the statue. You can see that many people have come to do this over the centuries because of all the erosion in the place where you kneel and the pillar itself.