THE POSTHUMOUS EL CID`S TOUR

El Cid - Don Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, the brave, courageous and faithful knight of the spanish Reconquista. As a warlord, he was particularly faithful to those governors who contracted his mercenary services, regardless whether they were christians or muslims. El Cid - came alive for all telespectators in 1961, played by Charlton Heston, and glamorous Sofia Loren as Doña Jimena. El Cantar del Mio Cid, the oldelst spanish epic poem delighted the spanish-castilian collective pride for over 800 years.

However, El Cid's longest tour started after his death, 1099 in Valencia. 1808 napoleonic troops profanated his tomb and his bones were scattered around. As pilgrims are proud today of bringing back scallop shells as a souvenir, so did generals and diplomants take much more up to skeletons, skulls or bones instead. This way, a great bunch of the hero's 206 bones (after all he had been human) reached the German Empire - in the suitcases of two french commissioners.

After all, did the hero's leftovers offer a great excentric, yet macabre gift potential for noble hosts as for instance Karl-Anton of the Hohenzollern dinasty or Fürst Metternich, the Earl of Peace. The largest bone treasure was identified by spanish intellectual commissioners in the Hohenzollern castle of Sigmaringen and taken back to his home town Burgos by the end of the XIX century.

So finally, all bones got back to their origin. All of them? No! Still a Cid's rib is alledgedly being exhibited in the westbohemian castle of Kynzvart, in it's "museum of curiosities" amidst a manuscript of Lope de Vega, a pair of gloves of Maximilian of Mexico, a uniform of the 4-year-old-Metternich and a few egyptian mummies. Perhaps worth doing a pilgrimage to Kynzvart!