Córdoba is a Spanish city and municipality in Andalusia, capital of the homonymous province, located in a depression near of the Guadalquivir river and the Sierra Morena.
With 326 609 inhabitants in 2016, it is the third largest and most populated city in Andalusia after Seville and Malaga, and the 12th in Spain. Its metropolitan area comprises eight municipalities.
In 1984, the mosque-cathedral of Córdoba was included in the list of World Heritage Sites by Unesco, a declaration that a decade later would be extended to the entire historic center.The Fiesta de los Patios Cordobeses was designated as Intangible Cultural Heritage of the Humanity in December 2012 and in 2018 the palatine city of Medina Azahara, on the outskirts of the urban center, was also declared a World Heritage Site.
Cordoba has been the birthplace of three great philosophers: the Roman Stoic Seneca, the Muslim Averroes and the Jewish Maimonides. The poets Lucano, Ibn Hazm, Juan de Mena, Luis de Góngora, Marco Anneo Lucano and Ángel de Saavedra, also known as the Duke of Rivas, were also born in Córdoba.