Albolafia Mill

There, by the bank, turns Córdoba’s most famous waterwheel. It is so old and so loved that it has appeared on the city’s seals since the fourteenth century, alongside the Mosque and the bridge. Its name, Albolafia, has been translated as «the one of good fortune» or linked to a man called Abul Afia, although scholars do not agree.

1Roman, Moorish or Christian?

For a long time it was said to be Roman, or to have been built by an Almoravid governor. Studies carried out in 2025, when the mill was cleaned, showed that it is Almohad, from the twelfth century. Its job was to lift water from the river to irrigate the Alcázar’s orchards; later it was also used to grind grain and full cloth.

2The queen who could not sleep

Here the story sounds like legend, but it is not entirely so. Isabella the Catholic spent long periods in the Alcázar, a few metres away. As the historians Torres Balbás and Caro Baroja recorded, in 1492 the queen, who was ill, ordered the wheel dismantled because the creaking of its axle would not let her rest.

A document of 1508, kept in Córdoba’s Municipal Archive and published by José de la Torre, bears witness to that dismantling.

The wheel you see is not the original: the architect Félix Hernández rebuilt it in 1965, and it was remade again after a fire in the 1990s.

3What to look for

• The wheel with its buckets for scooping up the water.
• The arched wall that holds it up.
• The Sotos de la Albolafia, the river’s bird reserve.