Almonaster la Real: A Mosque Inside a Church

On the hill above Almonaster la Real, in the Sierra de Aracena, stands an Andalusi mosque on a trapezoidal plan dictated by the slope, standing with an old Muslim fortress and a bullring built against it. It was put up out of whatever was to hand: Roman funerary altars, columns and capitals of the 1st and 2nd centuries, and Visigothic fragments of the 5th and 6th, including an epitaph slab, an iconostasis screen, an impost and a lintel. The mihrab is a deep brick and stone niche that has lost its facing, there is a square minaret outside to the north, and the prayer hall was lit only by the courtyard, the door and three narrow slits.