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The cathedral of Santa Maria in Ronda which has an Arab minaret as its bell tower

Moorish Spain’s Golden Age took hold in the 8th century, when Jews, Christians and Moors established a modus vivendi the likes of which has rarely been replicated, and which yielded one of the richest artistic periods Europe has known. Philosophers, musicians, poets, mathematicians and astronomers from all three religions helped establish Córdoba as a centre for learning second to no other in the West, at the centre of a trading network that stretched from Africa to the Middle East and through Spain to northern Europe.

However, the Moorish Kingdom was always under threat, and the Reconquest – a process that was to last more than 800 years – gradually gained momentum as the Christian kingdoms of central and northern Spain became more unified. Córdoba fell in 1031, Sevilla in 1248, and the great Caliphate splintered into a number of smaller taifa kingdoms.

The Moors clung on for another 250 years, but the settlements along la frontera fell in the early 1480s, Ronda in 1485, Málaga and Vélez in 1487, and finally Granada in 1492. The whole of Spain was once again under Christian rule.