{"id":97,"date":"2014-01-18T13:23:18","date_gmt":"2014-01-18T12:23:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/caseybrown.org\/blog\/?p=97"},"modified":"2014-01-29T19:46:14","modified_gmt":"2014-01-29T18:46:14","slug":"toledo-and-segovia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/caseybrown.org\/blog\/2014\/01\/toledo-and-segovia\/","title":{"rendered":"Toledo and Segovia"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the benefits of studying abroad in Madrid at the same time as the students doing American University’s\u00a0Iberian Experience programs<\/a>\u00a0is that the ICADE students have the opportunity to attend the trips around Spain and Portugal that the others go on as part of their program. We do have to pay for the longer trips since they are not included in our tuition fee, but all the day trips are free for us and it’s definitely worth it to explore the country we will call home for the next few months and experience life outside of the capital city of Madrid. Last Saturday we went to Toledo and yesterday we explored Segovia.<\/p>\n

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After our long week of orientation, we were pretty eager to head south for our first trip of the semester. Toledo<\/a>\u00a0is a beautiful medieval town about an hour south of Madrid\u00a0in Castilla-La Mancha<\/a>. Our tour guides for this trip were Paco, the deputy director of the program, and Patricia, an art history teacher. The passion shown by Paco, Patricia, and all of the professors and staff we have met so far on our trip are definitely some of the main reasons we are enjoying our time here so much. They know so much about art, history, culture, and religion of Spain, and they express the information with such a desire for us to truly understand and appreciate it that it is hard not to fall in love with the country.<\/p>\n

Besides it being such a well-preserved example of a medieval town with beautiful architecture and art, Toledo is also well-known as an example of long-term peaceful coexistence between three cultures: the Christians, Muslims, and Jews. Almost everywhere we went there were examples of mud\u00e9jar<\/a>, which is Christian or Jewish buildings, art, or churches strongly influenced by the Moorish artists who produced them, creating a very unique blend of the different cultures. Our first stop, the\u00a0Mezquita del Cristo de la Luz<\/a>, is something you wouldn’t normally see: a mosque dedicated to Jesus Christ. While it was built as a place for Muslim worship, it was converted into a Christian church and was actually built by the visigoths<\/a> even before then. Paco and Patricia showed us how the walls of the buildings and styles of the architecture changed over time. It was really fascinating and helped us see how similar all the different religions really are.<\/p>\n

After leaving the mosque, we saw the huge\u00a0Catholic Cathedral<\/a> in the center of the city that dominates Toledo’s medieval skyline and also visited the Jewish Synagogue of El Tr\u00e1nsito<\/a>. The fact that all of these holy sites of different religions have been allowed here for so long is really fascinating, and represents just another example of how much Spain’s culture has been shaped by the influences of many different cultures from the Romans and visigoths to the Muslims and Jews. While we would not have guessed it, Spain seems to be just as much of a melting pot as the United States. Our final two stops were two Catholic landmarks: the Burial of the Count of Orgaz<\/a>\u00a0painting by El Greco housed in Santo Tom\u00e9 and the Monasterio de San Juan de los Reyes<\/a>. The monastery was actually dedicated to the Catholic Monarchs<\/a>, Isabel of Castilla and Fernando of Aragon, whose unification of their two kingdoms was one of the first steps to the unified Spain that we know today. One of the interesting things we learned about was the supposed motto of their monarchy, the poetic tanto monta, monta tanto, Isabel como Fernando<\/em><\/a>, which basically means that they were joint rulers during their time and both maintained control of the kingdom, despite the strong patriarchal system<\/a> that was the norm back then. We actually saw this same inscription when we visited Segovia yesterday! After finishing up in the monastery, though, we left to make the trip back to Madrid.<\/p>\n