Tudela: Mudéjar on the Ebro

Tudela was a major Muslim town on the Ebro, and its cathedral — late Romanesque on Cistercian lines, begun at the end of the 12th century under Sancho VI and finished under two successors — was built on the site of the Great Mosque of the 9th to 11th centuries. Because the two buildings did not face the same way the mosque had to come down, and only some of its foundations were reused. The Judgement Doorway on the west front carries a crowded relief of the damned. Benjamin of Tudela, the 12th-century Jewish traveller whose account of a journey across the Mediterranean and the Near East is a major medieval source, was born here. The town is also the vegetable capital of the Ebro.