Abd al-Rahman I bought the Christian half of the site for 100,000 dinars in 785 and built the mosque by 787. About 120 columns, all reused from Roman and Visigothic buildings, carry two tiers of arches. The lower tier is horseshoe-shaped and the upper semicircular, with voussoirs alternating red brick and white stone. Abd al-Rahman III added a 154-foot (47 m) minaret in 958, and al-Hakam II added twelve bays and finished the mihrab in late 965.
The mihrab opens onto a small heptagonal chamber with a shell-shaped cupola, the earliest known mihrab that is an actual room. In 987 and 988 Almanzor extended the mosque east by 157 feet (47.76 m).
Ferdinand III turned the mosque into a cathedral in 1236. From 1523 a Renaissance nave and transept, begun by Hernán Ruiz I and finished by Juan de Ochoa, rose inside it. The complex measures 590 by 425 feet (180 by 130 m). UNESCO listed it in 1984.
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