On a recent trip to Spain, as we were touring sites I asked our tour guide if we'd be seeing anything from the Visigothic Kingdom. He said no, because the Moors destroyed all the Visigothic buildings.
That didn't seem right to me, because : a) the Moors have a reputation for being a pretty tolerant bunch, and b) we saw a bunch of Roman stuff, and I don't know why the Moors would destroy all the Visigothic buildings but leave the Roman buildings alone.
I've tried to find information to support or refute what our tour guide told us but I'm not finding anything. My instinct tells me that the absence of surviving Visigothic structures may have to do with the materials that the Visigoths used, but that's just a guess. Anyone have any answers?
Since the Visigoths were on the move for a long time, from Greece, to Italy, and finally to Spain, they didn't do a lot of building. But, once in Spain, their building was mostly focused on churches. There are some Visigothic churches still in Spain:
Church of San Juan Bautista in Baños de Cerrato (province of Palencia)
Church of San Pedro de la Nave in San Pedro de la Nave-Almendra (province of Zamora)
Church of San Pedro de la Mata (in ruins) in Sonseca (province of Toledo)
Church of Santa María de Melque in San Martín de Montalbán (province of Toledo)
Suso monastery at San Millán de la Cogolla, La Rioja
Hermitage of Santa María in Quintanilla de las Viñas (province of Burgos, ruins)
crypt of the monastery of San Salvador de Leyre, Navarre
updated per more recent scholarship
Saint Frutuoso Chapel in Braga, (Portugal, part of an additional, modern building)
Church of São Gião in Nazaré, (Portugal)
They are distinctive architecturally, and can be identified as Visigothic (besides sources and dating) by two commonalities: they use the basic Roman basilica as a template, but add Greek and other flourishes to it (the influence of their conquest through Byzantine areas, and Roman areas of the Mediterranean). That is, their churches are a hodgepodge of architectural techniques and aesthetics that they picked up along their way from the frozen steppes to the Iberian peninsula.
My only connection with this topic is the architectural history. While I'm familiar with the general history of the Goths and Vandals of Spain, I am not informed enough to go beyond this small tidbit.
edit:
Architecture of Spain
By Alejandro Lapunzina
This is a good resource for describing the historical context of their building:
Early Medieval Architecture
By R. A. Stalley
as a follow up, can someone explain to me the difference between the Goths and the Visigoths?
I know that there is a difference ... but I'm not an historian and don't know much about that time period.
Can you please give a reference for the well known tolerance you attribute to the Moors?