The site was originally a pagan temple, then a Visigothic Christian church in the year 600, before the Umayyad Moors at first converted the building into a mosque and then built a new mosque on the site in the 8th century. After the Spanish Reconquista,in 1236 it once again became a Roman Catholic church, with a plateresque cathedral later inserted into the centre of the large Moorish building. The Mezquita is regarded as the one of the most accomplished monuments of Islamic architecture