Shots from Toledo/Aranjuez

In the middle of planning and preparing for the conference, my parents came out to visit me in their first trip to Europe. Given that I have become a fairly adept tour guide over the last year, I took them around to various sites throughout the city (e.g the Prado, Reina Sofia, Plaza Mayor, Parque de Retiro, etc) as well as day trips outside of the city. Although I did not accompany them to Segovia, I traveled with them to Toledo, which I visited on a previous occasion with my friend Julia, and Aranjuez. Given that I discussed my trip to Toledo in a previous post, I will focus on a few facts on Aranjuez before noting one interesting sight in Toledo.

Aranjuez, which is 45 minutes outside of Madrid via suburban rail, is the home of the the Palacio Real de Aranjuez, the historical spring residence of the kings of Spain dating back to the late 1800s. The palace, which was used from April to June, was commissioned by Philip II in the late 1500s and completed in the mid 1700s under Ferdinand VI. Being a typical 1700s style palace, the opulance of the interior design - including a spectacular recreation of a room from the Alhambra - is comparable to Madrid's Palacio Real.

The difference between both sites revolves around the fact that the Palacio Real continues to host functions for the royal family while the Palacio de Aranjuez serves as a museum that includes the wedding dresses for King Juan Carlos's daughters and his daughter in law, the Princess of Austurias and future queen of Spain, Letizia, wife of Prince Felipe, the heir to the Spanish throne. Needless to say, this part of the musuem was mobbed by an adoring crowd of Spaniards who obsess over all things royal in Spain.

The Palacio's gardens are also a noteworthy for their size -- in their time they were the most important Hapsburg gardens in Spain -- as well as the inspiration for Joaquín Rodgrigo's famous piece for classical guitar and orchestra, el Concierto de Aranjuez. The piece has been performed by Paco de Lucía as well as Miles Davis, who interpreted the piece as a classical flamenco jazz piece with an orchestra in the seminal album Sketches of Spain.

On the subject of Toledo, I think it is interesting to note that I finally visited two synagogues and a mosque converted into a church from the 10th and 11th centuries. As I have discussed previously, these sites emerged during the rule of the Islamic Caliphate, which dominated the Iberian peninsula from the 9th through the 12th centuries. One of the unique trademarks of this period of Spanish history was the convivencia, a term that describes the peace that existed between Jews, Muslims, and Christians during this time. Architecturally, the islamic mudajar style of architecture, which manifests itself most spectacularly in the Alhambra in Granada but also appears in these buildings, was the architectural link between the design of places of worship for all three of these religions.

Much like other Spanish cities from this period of time, Toledo has a judería, a Jewish section of the city, which houses the two synogogues in the city. These buildings count as two out of the three synogogues that exist in Spain; the other site of worship can be found in Cordoba. The rest were destroyed or remodeled before, during, and after the Spanish inquisition in the 1500s, which aimed to create a wholly Christian nation through the expulsion or conversation of adherents of non Christian faiths. Similar motives promopted Christian rulers who conquered muslim cities to convert the city's mosques into churches as Christian armies from the North began to retake the Iberian peninsula in the 13th and 14th centuries. Although Cordoba's cathedral/mezquita is a spectacular example of this process, Toledo's tiny church, mezquita serves as another excellent ejemplar of this custom.

The photos are available here.