Some examples of Spanish architecture date back five thousand years, but the ones that really capture the imagination are the ones left by the Romans, such as the great aqueduct of Segovia, and the Roman theater at Merida.

With the establishment of the Moorish Umayyad dynasty at Cordoba, Spanish architecture began to flower. The architects, artists and craftsmen from the Arab countries combined their concepts with local elements, such as the horse-shoe arch, to construct cities like Medina Azhara (destroyed by the Almohads), and houses of worship, like the Mezquita at Cordoba. In the 8th century, the Mezquita, with its fantastic labyrinth of red and white Moorish horseshoe arches, was the crowning glory of Muslim architecture in the west. Both florid and flamboyant in scale, the mosque features golden mosaics, arabesque, carvings, cupolas, palm-leaf motifs framed by Sufi script, and marble panels.

The Alhambra in Granada marked the pinnacle of Muslim architecture in Spain. The palace consists of richly ornamented open-air rooms, with lacelike walls, courtyards with fountains and stunning frescoes. Built by the Nasrid dynasty; it combined the Cordobese architecture (horse-shoe arches), Almohads signs (sebka and palms) and introduced the prism, the cylindrical capitals and mocarabe arches. Other features include using simple materials like clay, plaster and wood, and the incorporation of water.

The twelfth to seventeenth centuries witnessed the advent of the Mudejar style in Spanish architecture. Although a distinctively Moorish or Islamic style, it was gradually enriched by western traditions. Some characteristic elements of Mudejar art are the horseshoe arch, the wooden roofing systems and the complicated and inventive use of bricks and glazed tiles. This style is to be found more in the small Spanish towns like Teruel (the Cathedral of Santa Maria de Mediavilla, Churches of San Pedro, San Martin and of the Saviour), and Cadiz (the Carduja Monastery), and not in the country’s larger cities.

In the last decades of the fifteenth century, the Plateresque style swept Spanish architecture. It was marked by rich ornamentation, and extremely decorated facades. One of the most representative monuments is the University of Salamanca. Baroque architecture in Spain marks another glorious epoch. Two opposite approaches were in vogue, the austerity in the works of Juan Herrera (the Monastery at El Escorial), at the intricate and the exaggerated style of surface decoration known as the Churriguresque. This was followed by Neo-classicism and the figure of Juan de Villanueva, who built the Prado museum.

In the late nineteenth century, Barcelona became the site of the Modernism movement. The most representative artist was Antoni Gaudi; The Modernist architects combined different modes of architectural expression, such as the Romanesque and the French neo-Gothic. The use of nature-forms, flowers, plants and animals, in ironwork, ceramics and stained glass, were characteristic. The aim was to create a modern art based on Catalan traditions, mixed with the use of new materials, like cast and wrought iron.