Architecture, like reading, is a matter of time. After more than forty years of work in the preservation and restoration of one of the most fascinating buildings in the history of architecture, Ruiz Cabrero publishes a compilation and revision of the ideas and processes that have shaped the monument over centuries. The title sums up its main finding: the hybrid identity of the mosque-cathedral of Córdoba is the product of a long conversation where pronouncements and responses follow one another in a continuous process of exchange, repetition, and variation, with developers and architects, religious and intellectuals, taking part.

The result is a collective creation, the fruit of dialogue, of mutual intelligence encrypted in stone and patterns. The narrative leads us to historical figures but its key contribution revolves around the current concept of restoration and its link with tourism. What distinguishes this volume is the thorough knowledge one can only get from firsthand contact with monuments, from observation through drawings, and from direct reading of architectures and the constructions.

Gone are the schematisms and clichés, the superficial views, the positions built solely on writings and sayings, never truly experienced or understood. Through Cabrero’s gaze, the mosque-cathedral reveals the dialectic nature of the best of architecture, that which continues to challenge us and invite us to expand our capacity to engage with other places and other eras; that is, to be radically contemporary.