The Iberian peninsula is replete with myths. In the north, pilgrims crossed remote mountains, and followed a sacred topography populated by pious hermits and holy bishops. Prodigious monuments bore witness to a glorious Visigothic past, which inspired a tiny band of crusaders to fight for repossession of the land for over half a millennium. In the northeast, Catalonia sat apart, linked politically and artistically to Europe. A barren no-man's land occupied the centre until the arrival of Christian settlers. In the south, al-Andalus was a paradise of luxury and tolerance, where Christians, Jews, and Muslims lived together in harmony (convivencia). Like most myths, these narratives contain a few grains of truth, but they have also obscured much of the literature on Spanish and Portuguese art. For those who work on Romanesque art the language of the pilgrimage road and of the reconquista remains an issue, despite repeated efforts to employ new approaches and clear rejection of the methodologies of earlytwentieth- century historiography. Likewise historians and art historians have proposed convincing alternatives to convivencia. Building on such work, this book aims to provide a revisionist survey of Spanish and Portuguese art and architecture from the Roman conquest to the late eleventh century. It cannot, and is not intended to, replace earlier surveys that describe all aspects of buildings and objects in great detail. Instead it brings together information from diverse sources – documentary, archaeological, and art historical – to present new narrative contexts and to highlight some important case studies. As its main subject is connections, and above all exchange across the supposed north-south divide, this book uses a cartographic framework. For generations lines on maps have bedevilled study of this art and architecture. They have infiltrated the popular imagination and have come to dominate the ways that most people think about medieval Spain and Portugal. One impetus behind this book is to diminish the power of these lines by setting them within a wider and deeper network. The pilgrimage-road map is an image of influence.