Chapel Severely Damaged by Fire in the Cathedral of Cordoba (Spain)

On the evening of August 8, shortly after 9:00 PM, a fire broke out in the Chapel of the Annunciation, in the Almanzor nave of the Cathedral-Mosque of Cordoba. The building, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is one of the world’s most extraordinary examples of architectural stratification.

Built as a mosque in the Umayyad period (8th-10th centuries) over an earlier Visigoth church (St. Vincent) and later converted into a Christian cathedral in the 16th century, the building features a complex combination of two-tone arches, reused Roman and Visigoth columns, sumptuous Renaissance and Baroque chapels, and large naves added over time, such as the Almanzor Chapel. The original building housed what is perhaps the mosque’s most iconic feature: the prayer hall. This eleven-naved hall was supported by two-tiered columns made of jasper, marble, and granite. The carved wooden-beam ceiling, known as a hypostyle, supported the structure.

This structural and material diversity makes fire management particularly challenging.

The flames, which started in an area used as a warehouse for cleaning equipment and machinery, quickly spread to the roof, requiring emergency intervention by firefighters.

The investigation is ongoing. According to some press sources, the fire may have been caused by a malfunctioning cleaning machine.

Three specialized teams—with personnel familiar with the structure, thanks to periodic exercises at the monument—operated on two fronts, internal and external. A dry pipe was also used to extinguish the fire, a fixed system installed in the building that allows firefighters to quickly connect their vehicles and pump water to the highest points, without having to lay long hose lines through complex spaces.

A fire caused damage to a section of the building with a wooden ceiling, resulting in an estimated restoration cost exceeding €1 million. While wooden ceilings form a charred surface layer during a fire, they lose strength and can collapse under the weight of water. In contrast, other areas of the building have stone or masonry vaults, which are non-combustible materials but also susceptible to collapse when subjected to intense heat and thermal shock.

After the fire, the roof of the Chapel of the Annunciation collapsed. The damage, however, was limited: the affected area covers approximately 25-50 m² out of a total of 13,000 m². Some works were affected, including the upper section of the Annunciation altarpiece and a painting depicting the Virgin with the Archangel.

If the initial information is corroborated by the investigations, at least three considerations can be identified:

• Warehouses must be regarded as areas susceptible to specific fire risks, primarily due to the materials or machinery stored within them and the absence of continuous monitoring. This risk intensifies when electrical equipment is under load, as exemplified in the 2023 incident in the Philippines.
• Additives that limit the amount of water used for extinguishing can reduce the damage caused by both the water and the fire itself. According to sources, the roof collapse was caused by structural damage from the fire and the load from the water used for extinguishing.
• The impact of a fire in an electrical energy storage system, even if it occurs on board a vehicle, presents a risk due to the amount of smoke and toxic substances produced by the fire, as well as the complexity of extinguishing it. In historic buildings, this risk warrants further consideration, particularly given the delicate nature of many of the assets stored within them. The specific risk related to Cultura heritage buildings must be promptly addressed, given the accelerated adoption of these systems for a diverse range of building management requirements.