Cordoba Gate
San Pedro Church, Carmona, Spain. January 2017
Anyone based in Seville looking for good day trips will come across Carmona. Unfortunately for train-loving-Matt, it was only accessible by bus, but it still made for a nice outing and good memory of the time in and around Seville. In a rare stroke of good luck with buses in Spain, the bus stop was literally right outside my hotel.
Add Carmona to the list of "cliff hanger" towns of Spain - Arcos de la Frontera [see: Arcos de la Frontera], Siguenza, Cuenca, Ronda - they are all dramatic, precipitously placed towns. The only other place I have encountered such a cliff-edge town was Abha, Saudi Arabia, built onto one of the most dramatic cliff sides I have ever seen. Carmona slowly slopes up to its perch on a ridge overlooking the great Andalucian valley that runs all the way to Cordoba.
The Phoenicians were in Carmona (I thought they only did coastal towns?) and the Romans as well. The Moors held it for many years although it switched hands among the local powers many times. If the Moors had not had so much infighting, Spain and Portugal would no doubt still be Muslim, Arabic-speaking countries. Finally, the Spanish retook Carmona and it became a fortified town atop the ridge. Interestingly, Carmona stayed Muslim-majority for many years after the Reconquista. Did they get a miss during the Inquisition? There are no obvious vestiges of Moorish Carmona - intriguing.
The bus dropped me on the main shopping street of Carmona which ended at the gate into the old city. As typical of medieval Spanish towns, the old city was mostly accessible only on foot rather than by car. I had a great walk around the city and up on the walls. The views over Carmona and out onto the plains below were stunning. At the opposite end of town, the land dropped off dramatically. There stood the Cordoba Gate which opened onto the vast plains below. People must have felt safe high up behind those walls in old Carmona (well, at least on this side of town!).
The remains of the fortress were mostly in ruin but next to them reposed the remains of a palace which had been converted into a "parador" (a government-owned hotel, usually in a unique property), Alcazar del Rey de Don Pedro . I walked through the lobby and back into their garden and pool patio which had those same gorgeous views out over the flat expanse below.
Before heading back to Seville, I explored some Roman tombs and an old amphitheatre that were outside of the old city center. I don't know why every time I expect I am going to find some perfectly preserved piece of Roman antiquity when I read "ruins". The amphitheatre was just an oval impression in a field and the "tombs" were unnoteworthy enough to escape photographic preservation on my part. However, the Romans had clearly been there and had a large enough population to need entertainment!
I boarded the bus back to Seville. If I needed a place to chill in Southern Spain without the sea and the tourist hoards, Carmona would make a good option (especially at that parador!).
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