Introduction: Toledo Cathedral

The Toledo Cathedral sits roughly in the middle of the Iberian Peninsula in, understandably, the city of Toledo. The cathedral sits atop what was called the Friday mosque, most likely built around the 8th century. After centuries of Muslim domination, the city of Toledo was taken by King Alfonso VI of Castile in 1085 during the Reconquista – the ‘reconquest’ of the Iberian Peninsula by the Christian Spaniards. After the city’s conquest, the mosque was consecrated and made into a cathedral with very few structural changes. In the 13th century, it was converted largely into the structure that exists today. The Toledo Cathedral is an architectural mark of the cultural interaction that occurred between Christian, Muslim, and Jewish tradition on that Iberian Peninsula, as well as the far-reaching influence of the Gothic tradition spawned in northern France.