Category: Spain, Portugal and Morocco, November 2017

The Mezquita of Córdoba contains a traditional cruciform cathedral inside a Muslim mosque. How that came to be is a story worth telling.

By 1523 Carlos I was both King of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor as Charles V. The Bishop of Córdoba (and later Inquisitor General as well as Cardinal), Alonso Manrique de Lara, wanted to build a new cathedral in Renaissance style. The Córdoba city council vehemently opposed this idea. The bishop appealed to Charles V, who, being a devout Catholic, gave him the go-ahead. Later, upon seeing the (unfinished) result in 1526, Charles V is supposed to have said something like “You have built what you or anyone else might have built anywhere; to do so you have destroyed something that was unique in the world.” I very much doubt whether Charles V said anything of the sort; he was responsible for demolishing a Moorish palace in the Alhambra in order to build a Renaissance residence for himself, so it seems unlikely that the Córdoba project vexed his esthetic sensibilities. But somebody said something like it, and I agree: the cathedral, occupying the central section of the mosque, is a worthy endeavor, considered one of the best in Spain, but one can see similar achievements in Seville or Burgos, and I would rather have seen the Mezquita in its pre-1523 state. In any case Charles V did not see the final result, since it was not completed in his lifetime.

On the other hand, it has been observed that had the cathedral not been built inside the mosque, as opposed to another location in the city, the mosque might not have survived at all; making it a Christian holy place ensured its sanctity.

In any case, the architect chosen to design the cathedral, Hernán Ruiz, fortunately had a high regard for Moorish architecture and displayed considerable sensitivity in preserving as much of the mosque as possible while fulfilling the prescriptions of the sponsors. He started the construction of the nave, but died in 1547, leaving his son, also named Hernán Ruiz, to continue his work. Hernán Ruiz II built the walls of the transept, but he died in 1569, leaving the project still unfinished, and it was then entrusted to Juan de Ochoa, who completed the ceilings of the nave and transept in 1607. But even this was not the end result; the Capilla Mayor still needed an altarpiece, which was begun in 1618, and finished in 1653. During this prolonged period of construction, artistic fashions evolved considerably, so that the cathedral incorporated several different architectural styles – Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque.

As a consequence of all these changes, the number of columns in the Mezquita was reduced from 1250 to a mere 856.

The cruciform cathedral has four main sections: the Capilla Mayor, which contains the High Altar; the Choir; the Transept, which forms the arms of the cross and contains the Crucero, or Crossing, separating the Capilla Mayor from the Choir; and the Trascoro, or retro-choir, a space at the back of the choir for the clergy and altar-ministrants to assemble.

We first encountered the cathedral by way of the Trascoro. The wall separating it from the choir is decorated with a set of columns framing two doors presumably connecting to the choir, presided over by a relief nestled in an upper alcove depicting St. Peter seated in a chair at the heavenly gates.

The orientation of Ruiz father and son was primarily Gothic, and this is reflected in the high vaults and walls of the cathedral. But it was Ochoa who completed the choir ceiling and the dome over the transept, and he was a Mannerist. I won’t attempt to explain Mannerism here, but in short, it was an outgrowth of Renaissance styles characterized by elongated proportions, highly stylized poses, and lack of clear perspective. To me, Ochoa’s ceilings appear simply as Renaissance art.

Yet the final appearance of the choir section is neither Gothic nor Renaissance, because it was only finished in the 1750s, when the Baroque sculptor Pedro Duque Cornejo installed 53 intricately decorated choir stalls which he had carved in mahogany wood. The west end of the choir is dominated by an episcopal throne, also by Duque Cornejo, dated 1752, and designed like an altarpiece, with three aisles and a depiction of the Ascension of Christ into heaven on the upper vault, topped off by a statue of the archangel Rafael.

The altarpiece of the Capilla Mayor, begun in 1618, was not finished until 1653, and even then changes were made later. A Jesuit, Alonso de Matias, designed it in the Mannerist style, structuring it in three aisles separated by dual composite capital columns, and two levels above the base. Occupying the central bay of the altarpiece is a towering splendid Tabernacle, which displays the consecrated Host. Directly above the tabernacle is a painting of the Assumption of Mary, while the side bays are filled with canvases featuring martyrs of the Church, all by Antonio Palomino, a court painter from Madrid. Palomino received his commission for these paintings in 1713, when Europe was already well into the Baroque era, and they replaced originals which were also Baroque in style.

Just outside the Capilla Mayor, on either side of the transept, are two imposing Baroque pulpits carved in black marble, mahogany and bronze by a French sculptor, Michel Verdiguier, who completed them in 1779. They are dedicated to the writers of the Gospels: the one on the right, to Matthew and Mark, the one on the left to Luke and John.

Every proper cathedral has to have a sacristy or treasury, and the one in the Mezquita is located on its south side, in the Capilla de Santa Theresa, where we headed after viewing the Capilla Mayor. The Chapel of Saint Teresa was a late addition, having been founded in 1697 by the Bishop of Córdoba at the time, Cardinal Pedro de Salazar. He was a devotee of St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), the great Spanish mystic and religious reformer, and patron saint of those who suffer from headaches. Salazar intended it to be a funerary chapel for himself and his family, as well as a sacristy, and he is indeed buried there. He located the chapel, appropriately, in the same place where the treasury of the mosque had been centuries before.

The most striking of the many sacred objects displayed in the Treasury is the Processional Custody of Corpus Christi. This is a gold and silver monstrance, a container where the consecrated Host is displayed for veneration during ceremonial processions. It was the creation of two artists, one of whom, Enrique de Arfe (1475-1545), was of German origin (birth name Heinrich von Harff), but apparently worked all his professional life in Castile. He is credited with introducing Renaissance innovations in precious metalworking to Spain. In the seventeenth century the Spanish silversmith Bernabé García de los Reyes augmented Arfe’s work with a new base and other additions, completing the monstrance in its present form.

A number of other historically significant and precious gold and silver sacred objects were on display – processional crosses, reliquaries, scepters, etc. No less imposing were the paintings and sculptures in the Treasury. Almost all of them are products of the Baroque era, late 17th and early 18th century. There are eight statues of saints and church fathers by the celebrated sculptor José de Mora Exposito of Granada, placed between the arches of the chapel. And of course there had to be a sculpture of Saint Teresa of Avila, also by de Mora, which presides over the altarpiece of the chapel. I don’t have a photo of it, but a better one than I could have obtained may be seen here. She is depicted holding a book with a dove on her shoulder.

Two famous but anonymous paintings, located over the chapel doors, represent The Immaculate Conception and The Assumption of Mary. But I was more drawn to three canvases by Antonio Palomino illustrating scenes from the history of the city of Córdoba: The Martyrdom of Saint Acisclus and Saint Victoria, The appearance of Saint Raphael before Father Roelas, and The conquest of Cordoba by Fernando III the Saint. The last of these is the only one associated with a verifiable historical episode: it depicts the triumphant entrance of King Ferdinand (Fernando) III into Córdoba in 1536. We did not photograph it, but you may see it here. The other two deal with episodes which I would describe as legendary, but which Córdobans certainly believed to be true. The Appearance of St. Raphael to Father Roelas is the last of several occurrences in which the guardian angel of Córdoba is supposed to have revealed himself to local clerics to announce his divine appointment as custodian of the city. The Martyrdom canvas depicts an episode from 304 CE, during the persecutions of Diocletian, in which the Roman prefect of Córdoba had the youth Acisclus and his sister Victoria tortured and killed for refusing to abjure their Christian faith. They were later made patron saints of the city.

Before leaving the Treasury, I want to show a few items we observed there which were of less exalted character than the sacred objects pictured above, but which we found intriguing for one reason or another. I have not been able to find out much about these more mundane pieces, but they are worth presenting nonetheless.

The Treasury is situated next to the Mihrab, which I’ll deal with in the next post, where I conclude our visit to the Mezquita.

Leaving the Mezquita, we immersed ourselves in the narrow streets of the Judería, the old Jewish quarter of Córdoba, and arrived in front of a building which proclaimed itself to be the Faculty of Philology and Letters of the University of Córdoba. It’s difficult to know where the demarcation between the Judería and the rest of Córdoba lies, since for about 500 years no Jews lived there, and few live there today. In any case, there are many establishments in the Judería that have no obvious Jewish associations, such as the University of Córdoba. But it was a quiet and welcoming place to begin our tour of the Judería, as the black cat sleeping beneath a nearby tree confirmed.

It was only a short distance from the University to the Plaza Maimonides. This square, of course, is named after the medieval Jewish scholar and physician Moses ben Maimon, generally known as Maimonides, who was born in Córdoba in 1138. He did not live there long, but there is a monument to him in the square. In 1148 the Almoravids, the Berber dynasty which had ruled al-Andalus for a century, were replaced by a less tolerant regime, that of the Almohads, who demanded that all Christians and Jews in Córdoba either convert to Islam or emigrate. The family of Maimonides emigrated – first to the city of Fez in Morocco, then to Palestine and finally Egypt. He was trained as a physician and eventually became the court physician to the Islamic ruler Saladin. In the meantime he also became the leader of the Jewish community in Egypt and completed a series of writings which established him as the pre-eminent Jewish scholar and philosopher of the Middle Ages. It’s not surprising that Córdoba would want to claim him as a native son.

Plaza Maimonides is filled with attractive houses, which made it worth a look regardless of its illustrious past associations. In addition to the statue of Maimonides, there is a bust of Muhammad ibn Aslam Al-Ghafiqi (died 1165), an Andalusian-Arab physician and oculist who is credited with the invention of eyeglasses (still called gafas in Spanish).

You wouldn’t expect a Jewish neighborhood to host a bullfighting museum. But that’s where we found the Museo Taurino de Córdoba- in an elegant mansion owned by aristocrats in the 16th century. We also found the Iglesia San Bartolomé. In the year 1391, a huge anti-Jewish pogrom broke out which decimated Jewish communities all over Spain, not least in Córdoba. Many Jews converted to Christianity or emigrated. In the aftermath, with many Jewish houses vacated, a new Christian parish church was established in the Judería on Calle Averroes. It is considered one of the finest examples of Mudéjar art in Spain. Unfortunately, it was closed when we were there, so we were only able to take pictures of the exterior, but a stunning photo of the interior can be found here.

Near the Plaza Maimonides we were ushered into a handsome two-story apartment complex, both stories fronted with arcades formed by elegant arches, surrounding a spacious courtyard paved with river-stone, dotted with trees and shrubs ensconced in graceful planters fashioned from brick-and-wrought iron, and graced with an exquisite fountain near the entry passage. Blue flowerpots, reflecting the Jewish heritage of the location, hung from the railings between the second-floor arches. The complex seemed to epitomize the life-style not only of the old Judería, but of medieval – and modern – Andalusia in general. We should all be so lucky.

The Córdoba Judería incorporates not only residential districts but also part of the downtown area of the city, and we soon found ourselves making our way down a busy street bedecked with hotels, bars, restaurants, boutiques and, of all things, the Museum of the Inquisition. Having been a familiar of the Spanish Inquisition in my salad days, I was anxious to get a look at it, although we did not have time to explore it at length.

Almost before we knew it, we found ourselves back at the Plaza de San Rafael, boarding the bus to continue on to Granada. I regretted having so little time to explore the city which was for many years the supreme jewel of Spain, but I was also thrilled to have beheld it once in my lifetime.

The Mezquita-Catedral de Córdoba – Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba – formally titled the Catedral de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción (Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption), but commonly just called the Mezquita, is one of the wonders of the world. I had wanted to see it for many years, ever since I saw a photo of the interior in a book of European history, and would not have gone on a trip that didn’t have it on the itinerary.

At the northeast corner of the Plaza de San Rafael, we saw what looked like an upscale apartment building with balconies overlooking the street. It turned out that these balconies were built into the south wall of the Mezquita in the 18th century to improve the illumination inside the walls. They do not provide entry to the Mezquita; for that we had to walk to the north end, along the Calle Torrijos, to the Patio de los Naranjos, the Courtyard of the Orange Trees. Confusingly, one enters the mosque through what is called the “south wall,” i.e. the south wall of the Patio, which is actually the north wall of the mosque. It is lined with 17 horseshoe arches which formerly provided access to the mosque, but nowadays only one of them, the Gate of the Palms (Puerta de las Palmas), is open.

Crossing the threshold of the Puerta de las Palmas, the visitor is transported back to another age, the world of medieval Islam. It was Abd al-Rahman I, founder of the Emirate of Córdoba, who initiated construction of the Mezquita in 785 CE. His successors expanded and enhanced the mosque, and later, when the Christians took over, they left it essentially intact. When they did start making their own additions, they did so in Mudéjar style (at first), so that the visitor’s initial impression is that of an overwhelmingly Moorish ambience with a few Christian accoutrements.

Proceeding down the length of the vast entrance hall, which runs all the way to the south end, one encounters a glass floor through which are visible excavations of Roman ruins – on top of which the Mezquita was built. Turning to the right or left, visitors find themselves, as we did, in one of the several prayer halls, all of which are so expansive and so similar that you cannot keep track of which one you are in at the moment.

The founding builders of the Mezquita – the architect is unknown – made extensive use of material from those Roman ruins, especially columns, but the columns were not tall enough to build the ceiling of the prayer hall to the height deemed proper, so the Muslim engineers made up the difference by adding not only column extensions but arches in multiple tiers. The effect is astounding. Row upon row, tier upon tier, a forest of columns stretches off into what seems like infinity.

The first Christian addition, as one might expect, was an altar; in Spanish churches the altar is enclosed in a space called the Capilla Mayor, or main chapel. The original Capilla Mayor, now known as the Capilla Villaviciosa, was created between 1357 and 1372 by appropriating a space under a dome in the mosque extension added by Caliph al-Hakam II in the 10th century. The artisans who built the altar made few if any architectural changes to accommodate it. A Gothic nave was added later, in 1489, and much later a Baroque altarpiece and other furnishings, but these did not encroach on the splendid 10th-century dome or the incredible interlacing archwork at the chapel entrance; and they were removed in 20th-century restoration work. The Villaviciosa Chapel continued to serve as the Capilla Mayor until 1607, when the new Capilla Mayor was completed.

A more substantial modification to the mosque came with the construction of the Capilla Real, the Royal Chapel, completed in 1371. This was done under none other than Henry (Enrique) II, murderer of Peter the Cruel and persecutor of the Jews, who intended it as a funerary chapel and transferred to it the remains of his father, Alfonso XI, and grandfather, Ferdinand IV. Those remains are no longer there, but the chapel is still known as the Capilla Real. Despite its Christian sponsorship, the Capilla Real was constructed in Mudéjar style by Moorish craftsmen. The Spanish Christians of the Reconquista era remained heavily under the spell of Moorish art and architecture and needed the skills of its practitioners to emulate them.

But this did not last. In the fifteenth century the successes of the Reconquista fueled a growing self-confidence, cultural identity and religious fervor in the Iberian kingdoms, manifested in the conquest of the last remaining Muslim strongholds, the final expulsion of the Jews, and the Voyages of Discovery. This was accompanied by increased integration into the European political and economic sphere and, most notably, exposure to the influences of the Italian Renaissance.

In the sixteenth century the consequences of these changes would come into full force. I’ll deal with that in the next post.

Córdoba was for a time one of the largest and most populous cities in the world. The time was circa 800-1000 CE, when its main rivals were Constantinople, Baghdad and Chang-an. Chang-an, for readers unfamiliar with China, was the capital of the Tang dynasty, which ruled the greatest empire in the world of that day. Chang-an was a long way from Baghdad and Constantinople, and the inhabitants of the western world knew nothing about China then. But they did know about Córdoba.

In 712 CE the armies of Islam conquered the Iberian peninsula. At that time the center of power in the Islamic world was the city of Damascus, ruled by the Umayyad Caliphate. But in 750 the Abbasid family overthrew the Umayyads and massacred nearly all of them. One of the few survivors, Abd al-Rahman, escaped and established an emirate in Iberia, al-Andalus, making his capital in Córdoba. While the new Abbasid Caliphate made Baghdad their capital, the successors of Abd al-Rahman proclaimed their own caliphate in Córdoba, and from there dominated Iberia as well as North Africa for the following two centuries.

Under the successors of Abd al-Rahman Córdoba became both an economic powerhouse and the leading center of learning in the Western world. Muslims, Christians and Jews congregated and worked there, with the Christians absorbing the lost scholarship of antiquity, transmitted to them by Muslim and Jewish scholars, and then disseminating that learning to the unlettered barbarian kingdoms of northern Spain and France.

Those northern Spanish barbarian kingdoms had almost immediately begun to coalesce and expand after the Muslim conquest of the eighth century. At first they made little headway against the power of the Caliphate of Córdoba, which dominated the south but tended to disregard the northern regions as poor and backward. But eventually, in the eleventh century, civil war tore apart al-Andalus and the relentless advance of the Reconquista began in earnest. In 1236 the forces of Ferdinand III of Castile took control of Córdoba once and for all.

For a while Córdoba continued to prosper under the Christian kings. The first Córdobans whose fortunes took a turn for the worse were the Jews, who had experienced a golden age under the Islamic caliphate. Especially after the ascent of Henry II to the throne of Castile, the Jews of Castile experienced increasing discrimination and persecution, and in the pogroms of 1391 the Jewish community of Córdoba was decimated. Until the late sixteenth century, however, Córdoba remained a large and thriving city; after that, a long decline ensued, and was reversed only in the twentieth century. Nowadays it is a city of medium size, with 325,708 inhabitants in 2018.

Our visit to Córdoba began on the west bank of the Guadalquivir River, where the heart of the old city lies. At that point the river is spanned by a fabled stone bridge which has been in existence at least since the first century BCE, though it has been rebuilt, restored and repaired many times over the centuries. For two thousand years, until the 20th century, it was the only bridge over the Guadalquivir at Córdoba. Now there are several, and the Old Roman Bridge has been restricted to pedestrian traffic since 2004. The Moorish rulers built two towers, one at each end of the bridge. The tower at the east end, called the Calahorra Tower, still stands in something like its original form.

A little way downstream of the Roman bridge on the west bank of the Guadalquivir stands the Albolafia Mill, another relic of antiquity. It may have originally been built by the Romans, along with several others, but in its present form it dates from the days of Moorish rule. Water was extremely important to the originally desert-dwelling Arabs and their Berber co-religionists, who all made extensive use of hydraulic technology throughout their domains; their word for water-wheel, noria, was adopted into Castilian Spanish, and from there spread to English as well. In Moorish times the Albolafia noria, turned by the force of the river’s current, poured water into an adjacent aqueduct, which then piped the water into emir’s palace and the city beyond. Most of the aqueduct has not survived the vicissitudes of time, but one arch is still standing and is visible in some of our photos.

The mill survived the Reconquista, but in 1492 Queen Isabella, who was staying in Córdoba, complained that the noise of the noria gave her a headache and had it dismantled. Actually, the headache was probably also a result of the ceaseless entreaties of Christopher Columbus, who visited Córdoba at that time to present one of his many petitions to her and her husband to fund his venture to the Indies. However that may be, the noria must have been rebuilt in the following century, because the Albolafia was converted sometime during that period to serve as a flour mill, and wheels are necessary to grind flour, no? In any case, the flour mill ceased operation in the 20th century, and the city council had to hire an antiquarian architect in the ’60s to reconstruct the noria. In its current incarnation, which is supposedly an exact replica of the original, the noria is a very impressive structure, and in addition to being a major tourist attraction, the mill is a godsend to the local cats, who feast on food provided by the operators.

We disembarked from our tour bus next to the Alcázar de los Reyes Cristianos, the palace in which Ferdinand and Isabella were living when Columbus came to pester them about financing his maritime ventures. Time did not permit us to explore the interior of the palace, which was unfortunate because it is considered a prime example of Mudejar architecture; but we did take numerous photos of its rather forbidding exterior as well as of the neighborhood around it. The Córdoba Alcázar began as a fortress of the Visigoths and became the emir’s palace under Moorish rule; in 1328, about a hundred years after the Christians retook Córdoba from the Moors, King Alfonso XI of Castile ordered a new palace built on the site, so that it was thenceforth known as the Alcázar de los Reyes Cristianos, the Alcázar of the Christian Kings, even though it still looks Islamic because it was built in Mudéjar style, with sumptuous baths, fountains and gardens. Ferdinand and Isabella made it the headquarters for their assault on the last remaining Moorish kingdom in Spain, the Emirate of Granada, which they took in 1492, at which time they also finally acceded to Columbus’ pleas to be allowed to discover America (which, of course, was not his actual intention). Unfortunately, they also made it the headquarters of the Spanish Inquisition, which they had established in 1480. The Moorish baths proved useful for waterboarding – 15th-century Europeans considered bathing to be unhealthful, anyway – so they were converted into torture chambers.

The Córdoba Alcázar is a square-shaped structure with a tower at each corner. The oldest is the Torre de los Leones, at the northwest corner, where the entrance to the palace is located, as well as the royal chapel. The octagonal tower at the northeast corner originally had a clock and was known as the Clock Tower, but is now called the Torre del Homenaje, or Tower of Homage. The Torre de la Paloma, Tower of the Dove, at the southeast corner, is a reconstruction of the square-shaped original, which was demolished in the 19th century; it had also been known as the Torre de la Vela, or Watchtower. The round Torre de la Inquisición, Tower of the Inquisition, has a sinister appearance that lives up to its name, which it owes to having housed the archives of the Inquisition for centuries. It was formerly also known as the Torre de los Jardines, the Tower of the Gardens.

Most of our stay in Córdoba was quite rightly devoted to visiting the Mezquita, but just as we reached its precincts we paused to linger in the Plaza de San Rafael. San Rafael is the guardian angel of Córdoba, and there is a tall monument in the Plaza with a statue of him by a French sculptor, Michel Verdiguier, who is also responsible for some of the Mezquita sculptures, on the top. Near it, at the north-west end of the Old Roman Bridge, stands the Puerta del Puente, or Bridge Gate. This replaced an old Roman gate of the city; the occasion for its construction was a visit to Córdoba by King Philip II in 1572, but it was not actually completed until much later. It was also rebuilt in 1928 and restored anew in the 21st century.

Departing from Seville on the morning of November 8, 2017, our tour bus headed for Córdoba on the A-398 highway. stopped for lunch at Hacienda Merrha, home of the Basilippo olive oil firm.

According to a placard we encountered at the entrance, Andalusian olive oil estates are found in a limited area around Seville, and and often combine olive oil production with other agricultural and ranching activities. They are organized according to a typical and traditional pattern, which is followed at Hacienda Merrha: a central courtyard surrounded by a tool shed, the mill housing the olive press and other production facilities, and the family residence. There is also a bell tower, which traditionally is used to summon the workforce or sound alarms.

In our house Sandie and I cook mostly with olive oil, so we were quite interested to find out how olives are grown and processed. The host took us on a tour first of the groves, where he showed the various types of olive trees and explained how they differ from one another. Fortunately, although I am extremely allergic to olive tree pollen (though not to olive oil), this wasn’t the time of year when it is encountered, so I experienced no ill effects while wandering through the olive groves. Not from the olive trees, anyway. At one point a madman, probably a refugee from the local asylum, came leaping into the grove, gesticulating wildly and waving a cell phone, but he soon calmed down when offered a jar of Basilippo olives for lunch.

Our host, the proprietor of the hacienda, explained to us the varieties of olives, or cultivars, grown on the estate. There were two main cultivars, described as follows:

Manzanilla: a large, rounded-oval fruit, with purple-green skin, which originated in the Seville area. “Manzanillas” means “little apples” in Spanish. Known for a rich taste and thick pulp, it is a prolific bearer, grown around the world.

Zorzaleña: an alternate name for Lechín de Sevilla, an important variety in Andalusia, grown predominantly in the province of Seville, but also cultivated in the bordering provinces of Cordoba, Cadiz, and the Málaga. The oil has a fruitiness with the presence of green, bitter, light almond, and pungent attributes that is slightly astringent and smooth on the palate.

We observed pickers at work in the groves, but they turned out to be cardboard cutouts. Nowadays, our host explained, they had machines that grabbed the trees by the trunk and shook them until the ripe olives fell off into bins placed around the trees.

Next our host ushered us into the ranch house, which on a traditional olive ranch would provide the living quarters of the proprietor’s family; but here it is the company showroom, where the host gives talks and shows videos of the olive oil production process. There are also displays of the estate in miniature illustrating the various steps of production, as well as actual equipment used in earlier times, i.e. before the advent of modern machinery.

The ranch house was also the setting for lunch, which culminated the tour of the estate. We were served a traditional Mediterranean-style lunch consisting of bread, cheese, and other goodies which included, of course, wonderful Basilippo-grown olives.

After lunch we re-boarded the tour bus and resumed our journey toward Córdoba. Somewhere along the way we saw a bright star in the distance, just above the horizon. Since it was broad daylight, this was an attention-getter. We soon discerned that it was an advanced type of solar power station which uses mirrors to focus sunlight upon a central tower, somewhat resembling a lighthouse, where the sunlight is concentrated and turned into electricity. Later I was able to look it up online and found out that this was the Gemasolar concentrated solar power project, inaugurated in 2011, in the town of Fuentes de Sevilla. It was the first solar plant in the world to use molten salt heat storage technology as a means for converting the energy of sunlight into electricity. According to its web page it was built by Torresol Energy Investments, a joint venture of Abu Dhabi-based renewable energy firm Masdar and Spanish engineering firm Sener, who own the plant in a 60-40% relationship, respectively. It is a small-scale operation, generating about 20 megawatts and providing electricity for 25,000 homes; but in pioneering this technology it paved the way for much more large-scale plants to come, such as a 690-megawatt plant near Las Vegas, Nevada. I was elated to find out that Spain is at the forefront of this technology, which potentially can provide enormous reductions in greenhouse gas generation over fossil fuels; the small-scale Fuentes de Sevilla plant alone reduces about 30,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year.

After completing the cruise on the Guadalquivir during the early afternoon, we were left with some free time to explore as we pleased; many of us chose to visit the Alcázar, which was not on the official itinerary of the tour. For me there was no option – I could not miss the Alcázar. Even more than the Cathedral, for me it is the paramount historical and esthetic attraction of Seville.

I’ve always been a fan of Moorish architecture, but I was unaware until visiting Spain in 2017 that some of the structures I had thought of as Moorish were actually built by Christians (or by Moors working for them) following the Reconquista, though with a strong Moorish influence, in a style known as Mudejar. The Alcázar is an example.

The original Alcázar was indeed built by the Moors, who constructed it as a fortified strongpoint in the tenth century. In the twelfth century a new Moorish dynasty, the Almohads, replaced the previous Almoravid rulers of al-Andalus, moving the capital from Córdoba to Seville; the Alcázar became their main palace, and they greatly expanded it. But in 1248 the forces of Ferdinand III took Seville, and in the aftermath the Castilian kings rebuilt the Alcázar according to their liking; few of the original Islamic-era constructions survived.

The Castilian kings took over the Alcázar as their royal palace, and that is why its name is officially the Real Alcázar (real means “royal” in Spanish; it was not assigned to distinguish it from the fake Alcázar down the street). Although some changes were made under Ferdinand III and his successors, Alfonsos X and XI, it was Pedro (Peter) the Cruel who began the rebuilding of the Alcázar in earnest, in the 1360s.

Peter the Cruel (1334-1369) was an interesting monarch. He seems to have earned his sobriquet of “the Cruel” by a number of murders and executions of his opponents, but he had a number of positive qualities as well; he was a patron of the arts, and he was noted for his support of the commoners, the merchant class, and of the Jews, which earned him the hatred of the Church and the nobility as well as an alternative characterization as El Justiciero, the Executor of Justice. In the end he was overthrown mostly by his own fecklessness, combined with bad luck.

Peter’s father, Alfonso XI, fathered a number of illegitimate children by his mistress, Eleanor de Guzmán, including the twin sons Fabrique and Enrique (Henry of Trastámara). Alfonso XI died of the Black Plague in 1350 and his wife, Queen Maria of Portugal, had Eleanor imprisoned and executed. This of course did not endear either her or Peter to Eleanor’s children, one of whom, Enrique (Henry) de Trastámara), eventually became Peter’s nemesis.

Peter married two women and deserted both in favor of his mistress, Maria de Padilla. His first queen was Blanche of Bourbon, a French princess, whom his half-brother Fadrique (Enrique’s twin) escorted from France for the wedding and was rumored to have slept with her on the way. Hearing the rumors, Peter shunned Blanche, eventually had her imprisoned, and may have had her murdered. He also forsook his second wife, Juana de Castro.

Henry of Trastámara, aided by the King of Aragon and other allies, began a series of rebellions against Peter. In his efforts to retain the throne, Peter committed a series of murders, including some of clergymen, for which he was excommunicated by the Pope. He also reputedly had Henry’s brother Fadrique treacherously murdered. Nevertheless, Henry was at first unsuccessful in his attempts to dethrone Peter. Peter had a good deal of support among the commoners, the merchant class, and especially the Jews, whom he favored. He also received aid from the English.

Eventually, however, Henry prevailed, with the help of his Aragonese allies and French mercenaries. He also took advantage of popular antisemitism to blacken Peter’s image, depicting Peter as “King of the Jews” because he employed a number of them, including one named Samuel ha-Levi as royal treasurer. Peter also tried to curb violence against Spanish Jewry, and had leaders of anti-Jewish pogroms executed.

In 1369 Henry and his allies defeated Peter, and during negotiations afterward Henry assassinated him with the aid of a ruse. As king, Henry of Trastámara proved to be no improvement over Peter, and his reign proved especially catastrophic for Spanish Jews. He enacted harsh laws against them and imposed crippling financial demands on the Jewish communities. In his reign anti-Jewish violence continued to mount, culminating in the great pogrom of 1391, when 4000 Jews were murdered by a mob in Seville, and many more in other cities as well. The Jews had indeed been ardent supporters of Peter, but that was because Henry had harbored animosity toward them from the start. Yet Henry continued to employ Jews as financial advisors and tax collectors.

Between 1364 and 1366 Peter had the Alcázar rebuilt in Mudejar style. He was on friendly terms with the Muslim emir of Granada, and imported a number of skilled artisans from there as well as using local talent. Later monarchs made their own additions in other styles – Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, etc.

Visitors enter the Alcázar through the Puerta del León, the Gate of the Lion. This takes its name from a tile plaque inlaid in the stonework above it, which features a crowned lion holding a cross in its claws. Once inside the gate, one finds oneself in the Patio del León, the Courtyard of the Lion. The wall at the end of the Patio del León is one of the few elements of the Alcázar left from Moorish times.

Passing under the arches of the Moorish wall, one enters the Patio de la Monteria, the Courtyard of the Hunt. The entrance to the Palace of Peter the Cruel is at the far end of the patio. The northeast side of the Patio provides entry to the Sala de Justicia, the Hall of Justice; the wing on the southwest contains the is the Cuarto del Almirante (Admiral’s Room) and Casa de Contratación (House of Trade). Originally the palace was only one story high – construction of the upper story began in 1540 and was completed in 1572. But public access is limited to the ground floor only; the upper floor is still the residence of the royal family, when they are in Seville.

I turned off the Patio de la Monteria to explore the right wing of the palace, where the Salón del Almirante is located. It was part of the Casa de Contratación, which the Crown set up in 1503 to control the trade with the Americas. A placard in the Salón notes that the Queen (Isabel) chose Seville as the destination for the trade with the New World because it afforded protection against pirates. This was a wise choice; Cádiz, the obvious alternative, was a prime target for raiders. In April 1587 the English raider Sir Francis Drake occupied Cádiz harbor, destroyed 31 ships and delayed the sailing of the Spanish Armada for a year; in 1596 a combined Anglo-Dutch force occupied Cádiz, destroyed 32 ships and looted the city.

The Salón del Almirante displays several paintings of historical events and personages. The next room, the Sala de Audiencias, or Chapterhouse, was the meeting-place for the officials of the Casa de Contratación; today it is a chapel. It has a stone bench running around the walls where the members sat. It is most remarkable for the altarpiece, which is a triptych painting by Alejo Fernandez, Virgen de los Mareantes (Madonna of the Seafarers), depicting the Virgin Mary sheltering a group of Native Americans with four saints in attendance. The Sala also displays a scale model of a 16th-century caravel.

After the detour through the Casa de Contratación, I skipped back to the Mudejar Palace, where the real treasures awaited. The patios paved with geometric designs and furnished with central fountains were an Islamic tradition that the Christian Castilian kings enthusiastically embraced, and so did I.

Inside the palace, each door and wall was graced with colorful tile framing and borders. The most dazzling room in the palace is the Salón de Ambajadores (Hall of Ambassadors), also known as the Throne Room. It was in fact built as a throne room in the 11th century. King Peter completely remodeled it in the 14th, but continued to use it as a throne room, where he received ambassadors and other dignitaries.

Next to the throne room, in the middle of the palace, is the epitome of Mudejar architecture, the Patio de las Doncellas, Courtyard of the Maidens. The name originates in a legend that the Moors demanded a tribute of 100 virgins a year from the Christian kingdoms. The legend is apocryphal, but what is true is that the courtyard was paved over with black and white marble in the 16th century. It remained in that state until 2005, when it was excavated and restored to its original appearance.

I really needed an entire day to explore and photograph the Alcázar; in fact I had only about three hours, and I missed important parts of the palace, such as the Baths of Maria Padilla, where Peter the Cruel’s mistress enjoyed bathing in private. I devoted an inordinate amount of attention to the gardens, partly because the outdoor light was more conducive to photography – I don’t remember whether flash photography was allowed inside the palace, but in any case I didn’t have a flash attachment with me.

Be that as it may, the gardens of the Alcázar are fabulous, right out of the Arabian Nights. The Moors of course loved gardens, and cultivated them from time immemorial, but the Christian monarchs greatly expanded and reworked them. Today the gardens contain over 20,000 plants of 187 different species.

Immediately in back of the palace are the six Historic Gardens. These were inherited from the Moors but extensively redone during the 16th and 17th centuries. They include the Prince’s Garden, the Flower Garden, the Galley Garden, the Troy Garden, the Dance Garden and the Pond Garden.

The Prince’s Garden is on the southwest side of the palace and has a Renaissance gallery which provides access from the palace and separates it from the Garden of the Flowers. The latter received its present form in the 16th century from Philip II, who loved flowers. Although he was responsible for its Renaissance elements, including the niche with the bust of his father, the Emperor Charles V, he retained the basic Moorish layout of four sectors, planted with citrus trees, and a fountain in the center.

While I was wandering through the Prince’s Garden I stumbled into a beautiful courtyard, the Patio de los Levíes, just outside the Casa de Contratación, with a pool and a charming princess who obligingly posed for a couple of photos. The Patio’s name has to do with the fact that its outside wall was originally part of a house in the Jewish quarter, possibly belonging to King Peter’s treasurer, Samuel ha-Levi.

From Philip II’s Flower Garden I wandered out into the terra incognita of the back gardens, where it is easy to get lost. I first encountered the Jardín de la Cruz, the Garden of the Cross. A placard there informed me that it was also known from the sixteenth century onward as the Jardín del Laberinto Viejo, the Garden of the Old Labyrinth, which had been much more extensive – and really was a labyrinth – but in 1910 it had been obliterated, at the insistence of the Queen of Spain, Maria Christina of Austria, wife of King Alfonso XII, who did not like the idea of ladies and gentlemen of the court getting lost in the labyrinth, where all sorts of hanky-panky was possible. Now all that is left of the Old Labyrinth is its central source. This consists of a pool with a mound of greenery in the center, which was intended to represent Mount Parnassus, site of the Oracle of Delphi in Greece.

Next I found myself in the Jardín de las Damas, the Ladies’ Garden, which boasts a wonderful fountain made of Genoese marble, topped with a bronze statue of Neptune by the Spanish sculptor Bartolomé Morel (1504-1579), who also cast the Giraldillo.

From the Fountain of Neptune a walkway leads to a peculiar rose-colored structure with what looks like old-time streetlights on top. I still haven’t been able to identify this item, so I just call it the Mystery Tower.

From the Tower of Mystery the walkway continues to the Pavilion of Charles V. This square structure with a tiled roof seems to have originated in Moorish times, but it was rebuilt for the occasion of the marriage of Emperor Charles V to Princess Isabel of Portugal in 1526. It represents a combination of Mudejar and Renaissance styles.

From the Pavilion of Charles V I wandered off to the English Garden, which appeared to be the wildest and least-manicured sector of the Alcázar gardens. It was established to commemorate the marriage of King Alfonso XIII to Victoria Eugenie Julia Ena of Battenberg, a German princess who was also the youngest granddaughter of Queen Victoria of England. It occurred to me that it would have made a great alternate for the Old Labyrinth as a place for court hanky-panky after Queen Maria Christina’s depredations of 1910.

Eventually, after being lost in the gardens for a while, I managed to stumble back to civilization again, reaching the Galería de los Grutescos, or Grotto Gallery. This actually had been the wall of the Alcázar in the days of the Almohads; in the early 17th century Italian architect Vermondo Resta converted it into an L-shaped gallery, essentially a covered walkway with archways, supported by columns, affording views on both sides. I found that it provides an incomparable overview of the Alcázar gardens.

Resta is credited with introducing the Mannerist style to the Alcázar, in a variant called “grutesco”, in this case involving rocks that project from the wall of the gallery, blending the natural with the artificial – hence the term “Grotto Gallery”. In the wall of the Gallery (not seen in the photo below) is the Fuente de Fama, or Fountain of Fame, which used to play an organ pipe when the water was flowing. Maybe it still does, but I don’t recall it doing so the day I was there. It also formerly had 15 statues of mythological figures, of which six now remain; I haven’t been able to determine what happened to the others.

There is a lane or avenue that runs clear across the gardens from the Fountain of Fame to the opposite wall, and separates the six Historical Gardens from the rest. Looking to the left from above the Fountain, one can see clear across to the Charles V Pavilion. On the left also is the New Labyrinth Garden – that’s not its official name, and I later found out that there is a larger maze garden out beyond the English Garden that I never reached, but the one by the Grotto Gallery is definitely a little maze.

Looking to the right from the same point, one can see several of the Historic Gardens; the nearest and most noteworthy is the Pond Garden, which contains Mercury’s Pool. The pool was originally used as a cistern to collect the water brought in via the old Roman aqueduct and Calle Agua in Barrio Santa Cruz. But other water sources were found in the 16th century, and since then the pool has been merely decorative, and the statue of Mercury, the Roman god of trade – another work of Bartolomé Morel – was added, symbolizing Seville’s status as a prosperous port.

The Dance Garden is also visible in the picture below; it provides entrance to the Maria Padilla baths.

From a vantage point a little farther out, I was able to get a better view of the Little Maze Garden, as I called it. I also spotted a fountain in the guise of a stone lion that spews water from its mouth; this belongs to the Lion Bower, a small pavilion – out of sight in my photo below – with a blue and white tiled roof. Finally there was a pretty gazebo with a fountain in the center.

Closing time was getting near, and it was time to go. On my way out I shot one final picture of a lovely tiled bench with another charming princess sitting on it, feeding a peacock. It was a fitting conclusion to the day.

From Seville Cathedral, we walked a few blocks to the east bank of the Guadalquivir River. There, near the Torre del Oro, we boarded a boat which took us on an afternoon cruise up the river. The cruise provided a startling contrast to the Cathedral; it left little doubt that while Seville is a city that treasures and honors its past, it is also a modern metropolis which is at the forefront of 21st-century innovation.

The Torre del Oro, “Tower of Gold”, the starting and ending point for our cruise, was built by the Almohads in the thirteenth century as a watchtower. In 1248 it served as an anchor point for a chain stretched across the river to block the Castilian forces besieging Seville. That stratagem failed. After taking Seville, the Castilians used the Torre as a prison. Despite its name, the Torre del Oro is not made of gold. It has that name because it casts a golden sheen on the water of the river.

Our cruise boat first took us south under the Puente de San Telmo, an elegant 1931 bridge spanning the Guadalquivir River, with sidewalks, a bike path and city views. Nearby on the east bank was the Palace of San Telmo, a 17th-century Baroque palace originally built as the University of Navigators, and now the seat of the Andalusian provincial government. The opposite side of the river was lined with modern apartment and office buildings, one of them housing the corporate offices of the Diario de Sevilla, a prominent newspaper.

Seville is a major port of call for cruise ships, and their terminal is at the Muelle (dock) de las Delicias, right alongside Maria Luisa Park. To reach it we first passed under the Puente de los Remedios, which terminates at the roundabout where we had seen the pretty little Punto de Información Turistica castle and the monument to Sebastian Elcano in the morning.

A large cruise ship, the Star Pride, was tied up at the cruise terminal. On the shore beyond it was visible the Argentine Pavilion from the 1929 Exhibition; it now houses the Antonio Ruiz Soler Professional Dance Conservatory.

A little farther on down the river, we passed an outdoor terrace bar called the Muelle New York, and in back of it, a large, elegant rose-and-white building housing the Escuela de Arte de Sevilla – the Art School of Seville. In the distance we could make out the low Puente de las Delicias and, beyond it, the tall V Centenario Bridge, where a major highway crosses the river.

At this point our boat reversed course and headed back toward the San Telmo bridge, where the northern part and longer leg of our cruise would begin.

Passing once more under the bridge, we observed an impressive round structure on our right (east bank); this turned out to be the Teatro de la Maestranza, an opera house built for the 1992 Seville Expo. Shortly we came to another bridge, the Puente de Isabel II or Puente de Triana. This is an elegant iron arch bridge completed in 1852, connecting the Triana neighborhood to the center of Seville. Beyond it loomed the tallest building in Seville, and indeed in all of Andalusia, the Torre de Sevilla. It is a 40-story skyscraper, 180.5 meters (592 feet) tall, housing primarily commercial offices, but it also hosts a 5-star hotel.

The various bridges we encountered served as points of demarcation for the several stages of our cruise. The next one after the Puente de Isabel II was the Puente Cristo de la Expiración, commonly known as El Cachorro (“the Puppy”). It owes its name to a nearby church, the Capilla del Patrocinio, a church from which the brotherhood of Cristo de la Expiración makes a procession during Holy Week. This event is popularly known as the “Cristo del Cachorro”, so the bridge has taken on that nickname as well. The bridge has umbrellas over the pedestrian walks to shade from the heat.

As the pictures show, there are graffiti on and underneath the bridge. A little farther on down the west bank, we passed several boat launching ramps where the backdrops were also plastered with graffiti, some of them quite artistic. Bearing in mind that graffiti are especially prolific in the Hispanic neighborhoods of American cities, I wondered if they are a manifestation of the a common Hispanic artistic proclivity that produced the works of such luminaries as Velazquez, Murillo, Goya and Picasso.

At El Cachorro the river takes a sharp bend to the right. Before continuing the account of our cruise on the Guadalquivir, I need to make a digression and say something about the history of this river in order to save the reader from becoming hopelessly confused (as I was at the time) about where we were and what we were seeing.

The Guadalquivir is the only major navigable river in Spain. In Roman times it was navigable as far up as Córdoba, but nowadays it is only navigable as far as Seville. It is a very annoying river, because it is both subject to silting up, which increasingly restricts its navigability, and to severe flooding, causing much damage and loss of life. In fact, the silting up of the Guadalquivir in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries caused Seville to lose its pre-eminence in Spain’s Atlantic trade, which became lost to the port of Cádiz at the mouth of the river.

The silting-up of the river did not in any way alleviate the flooding. Catastrophic floods continued, and continue even into the twenty-first century, despite the extensive engineering efforts taken to mitigate the problem. These include first and foremost the diversion of the river into a new artificial channel, the Corta de Tablada, to the west of the historical course. The Corta was completed in 1926, during the reign of King Alfonso XIII; the old course of the river thereafter became known as the Canal (channel) of Alfonso XIII, and now dead-ends at the San Jeronimo Bridge at the north end of the city. The new channel also improved the navigability of the river since it is 4 kilometers shorter than the old one and less subject to silting. But the Alfonso XIII channel is still available for use by cruise ships and other traffic via a port lock.

The diversion of the river created an island between the two channels, known as the Isla de la Cartuja. That’s why I digressed into the above long-winded explanation; without it references to the Isla de la Cartuja would be mystifying. Of course it’s really a long peninsula rather than an island because the Alfonso XIII channel ends before rejoining the new channel, but it’s still referred to as an island. It is named after a monastery located near the Pasarela de la Cartuja, the next bridge up from El Cachorro. For a long time it was relatively undeveloped, but in 1992 it became the site of the World’s Fair held in that year, and after that development accelerated, and many of the landmarks we saw date from the post-1992 period.

The Torre de Sevilla skyscraper, completed in 2015, is one example. A short way north of it, and farther back from the river, is a round yellow postmodern structure called the Torre Triana, completed in 1993; inspired by the Sant’Angelo Castle in Rome, it is the main administrative building of the Government of Andalusia. Still further north, on the riverbank, is the Torre Schindler, an observation tower built for the Exposition of 1992. It is 65 meters (213 feet) high and is now part of a larger complex, the Museum of Navigation.

Following the rightward curve of the river past the Schindler Tower, we came to the Pasarela de la Cartuja, a footbridge also built for the 1992 Exposition. Between it and the next bridge, the Puente de la Barqueta, the bank of La Cartuja is lined with a pair of unique gardens. First is the Jardín Americano, the American Garden, filled with plant species donated by countries of the Americas for the 1992 Exposition. Next comes the Jardines del Guadalquivir, which has been described as a “modern take on Moorish gardens.” Also created for the 1992 Exposition, it was endowed with a number of sculptures, towers, bars, stages and other structures which have been abandoned since the Exposition, reputedly giving the park somewhat of a rundown appearance.

We were startled to see a giant rocket (apparently) standing in the Guadalquivir Garden. It turned out that it was not in the Garden itself but somewhat behind it, and it is a full-size replica of a European Space Agency Ariane IV rocket, brought to Seville from France specially for the 1992 Exposition and placed next to the Pavilion of the Future. The next generation of the Ariane series, the Ariane V, produced the vehicle that launched the James Webb Space Telescope from French Guiana.

Just beyond the Guadalquivir Gardens, we came to the Puente de la Barqueta (“Bridge of the Barges”), a modern structure built specifically as the main crossing point for vehicular traffic for the 1992 Exposition.

Near the end of the Barqueta bridge on the Cartuja side is Isla Magica, a theme park with a roller coaster and other rides, shows and a lake.

Just north of Isla Magica we saw a large square building with a slanted blue structure on top shaped like a smokestack on an old cruise liner such as the Queen Mary. This curious structure turned out to be the RTVA (Radio y Televisión de Andalucía) building. RTVA is a corporate public agency owned by the government of Andalusia, providing radio and TV broadcasting.

After passing the RTVA building we came to the Alamillo Bridge, which marked the northern end of our cruise. The Alamillo is easily the most unusual and idiosyncratic bridge over the Guadalquivir; in fact it is the most bizarre bridge I have ever seen anywhere. A Wikipedia article characterizes it as a “cantilever-spar cable-stayed bridge with no backstays or anchorage,” but this does not begin to convey the startling weirdness of the bridge; you have to see it.

The Alamillo Bridge is not the only one of its kind in the world. It was the brainchild of the illustrious Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, who has designed similar bridges in Buenos Aires, Dublin, Athens, Jerusalem and, closest to home, the Sundial Bridge over the Sacramento River at Redding, California. Although I’ve been to Redding, I’ve never yet seen the Sundial Bridge, or any of the others.

On the way back to the Torre del Oro, we were able to identify a few attractions that we hadn’t noticed previously. One was a monument to the Roman emperor Trajan standing inconspicuously by the waterside in front of an apartment building between some trees. In his time the Roman Empire reached its greatest extent with the conquest of Dacia, which is modern-day Romania. The association of Trajan, a native of Seville, with Dacia inspired a Romanian sculptor, Vasile Corduz, to create a sculpture of the emperor holding the Capitoline Wolf in his arms. The Romanian government then presented the statue to the city of Seville for the 1992 Exposition.

As we passed back under the Isabel II Bridge, we caught sight of the Castillo de San Jorge on the west bank. This is what remains of a fort built in medieval times that eventually became the Seville headquarters of the Spanish Inquisition. It was partially demolished in the 19th century and the Mercado de Triana, a grocery market, was built on the site. Today the market is still in operation, but the remains of the Castillo have been made into a museum devoted to the history of Seville, the Spanish Inquisition and religious repression in general.

If there had been an opportunity, I would have unfailingly visited the museum, but there was time that afternoon to visit only one more attraction, and that had to be the fabled palace of the Alcázar.

Seville Cathedral is the fourth largest church in the world, after St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, the Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady Aparecida in Brazil, and the Duomo in Milan. It is the third largest cathedral – St. Peter’s is not a cathedral, merely a basilica, because the seat of the Pope as the Bishop of Rome is St. John Lateran. Seville Cathedral is the world’s largest Gothic church – the larger churches are not Gothic in style.

When Ferdinand III took Seville in 1248, he converted what had been the city’s Grand Mosque into a cathedral. The mosque had been completed only fifty years earlier. Its minaret became the cathedral’s bell tower, known as the Giralda.

In 1401 the city fathers of Seville decided to build a grandiose new Gothic cathedral on the site of the former mosque; construction began in 1434 and, when it was completed in 1506, the new cathedral was the largest church in the world, eclipsing Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, which had held that honor for nearly a millenium.

The Giralda was left intact when the cathedral was built, but the builders topped it with a belfry, and, in 1568, erected a sculpture of a pregnant woman bearing arms and a cross atop the belfry. The sculpture’s official title is the Triumph of the Victorious Faith, but it is popularly known as El Giraldillo. It is 3.47 meters tall and is cleverly designed to function as a weather vane. A replica of the Giraldillo stands on the south side of the cathedral in front of the Door of St. Christopher. On the day of our visit, the Giraldo was undergoing maintenance and was partly covered with scaffolding.

We entered the Cathedral via the Puerta del Lagarto, the Door of the Lizard. It is so named because there is a reptile, actually a stuffed crocodile, hanging from the ceiling in front of it. The crocodile was a present from the Sultan of Egypt to King Alfonso X of Castile, successor to Ferdinand III. Why Alfonso had it hung in front of the cathedral door I haven’t been able to determine. But it remained over the door ever after, even when the converted mosque was replaced by the new cathedral in the 15th century.

The dimensions of the cathedral are equally as overwhelming from the inside as they are from the outside. The nave is 42 meters (138 feet) high and the total area is 11,500 square meters or 123,785 square feet. There are 80 side chapels, 75 stained-glass windows, and countless paintings.

In the middle of the church are located the Choir and the Main Chapel (Capilla Mayor). The latter contains the main altar with its retable (altarpiece), which is carved out of wood and covered with gold. It was the magnum opus of the Flemish sculptor Pierre Dancart, who began it in 1482. He died in 1488, and others continued working on it until it was finished it in 1564. It is 30 meters high by 20 meters wide (98 x 66 feet) and consists of 45 scenes from the life of Christ and the Virgin Mary. It is claimed to be the largest and richest altarpiece in the world.

Adjoining the choir, on the opposite side from the Capilla Mayor, is the Antichoir, or Trascoro, containing the ornate stone altar of the Virgen de los Remedios, framed by the tall Gothic vault and its supporting columns. In front of the altar two obscuring white panels had been installed, for what reason I never found out.

It has been estimated that there are around 40,000 kilograms, or 88,000 pounds, of gold in Seville Cathedral. There is also a rather large amount of silver. A good deal of it, 475 kilograms, is in the Silver Altar. Formally known as the Capilla de la Virgen del Pilar (Chapel of the Virgin of the Pillar), it is located in the north transept and houses a Baroque altarpiece from the end of the 17th century. Behind the altar is a large silver monstrance shaped like the sun. Above the monstrance is a painting depicting the Ascension of the Virgin Mary, and above that is a stained glass window by Arnao of Flanders depicting the entry of Christ into Jerusalem on the upper half and Charity on the lower half.

Chapels, paintings, windows – Many of the other chapels had famous paintings and/or stained glass-windows in them. Unlike the Silver Altar, most were protected by rejas – iron grilles.

The Chapel of St. Anthony is of particular note. It contains a number of paintings, several of which are shown below. On one wall, behind an elegant basin which I speculate is likely a relic of Moorish times, hangs an Adoration of the Magi on the left, and a Circumcision of Jesus on the right. But it is the altarpiece painting for which the chapel is famous: The Vision of Saint Anthony of Padua, a Baroque work from 1656 by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617-1682). It depicts St. Anthony, kneeling with his arms outstretched to a vision of the infant Jesus, who appears in a cloud surrounded by angels and saints. Its fame is not solely due to its artistic worth: it has a turbulent history. In 1813 French invaders looted a number of works of art from the Seville Cathedral, of which The Vision of Saint Anthony was one, but the cathedral chapter persuaded the French commander, Marshal Soult, to accept another painting by Murillo, the Birth of the Virgin, instead. Years later, in 1874, a thief cut out the figure of St. Anthony from the painting. He took the picture to New York, where he tried to sell it to an art dealer. The dealer recognized the clipping and arranged its return to the Spanish embassy, and in 1875 it was expertly restored to the original painting. I haven’t been able to find out what happened to the thief.

The Cathedral has two organs, each on a lateral wall of the choir. Neither of them are original; they replaced organs which were added to the cathedral in the late eighteenth century but were destroyed in an earthquake in 1888. The current instruments were installed in 1903 and updated in 1996. The organ on the south lateral wall stands on an intricately carved marble porch, and both are topped with elaborate sculptures. They are controlled electronically from a single console.

It is impossible to miss the tomb of Columbus, which stands in the south transept of the cathedral near the Door of St. Christopher. Columbus’ son Diego is also buried in the Cathedral.

Columbus, who died in 1506 in Valladolid, Spain, was originally buried in a convent there, but his remains were later removed to Santo Domingo, on the island of Hispaniola, and then to Cuba. The tomb which now stands in Seville Cathedral was originally built in 1892 for the Cathedral of Havana, Cuba, but when Spain lost Cuba in the Spanish-American War of 1898, it was brought to Seville and installed in the Cathedral. The elaborate catafalque, which contains Columbus’ remains, is borne by the kings of Leon, Castile, Aragon and Navarre. These are of course idealized kings and not historical figures.

In addition to Columbus, a number of other eminent personages are buried in the Cathedral, including several kings of Castile and their wives (King Ferdinand III, conqueror of Seville; his successor Alfonso X, the Wise, and his wife; Pedro the Cruel). A number of lesser figures – cardinals, archbishops, etc. – are also commemorated there, such as the Bishop of Scalas, who died in Rome and is buried there, but has a cenotaph in Seville Cathedral, photographed by Sandie.

Near the tomb of Columbus I encountered an unfamiliar piece candelabra-like object which resembled a Hebrew menorah but has figures of saints instead of candlesticks; I haven’t been able yet to determine what it is called. In the Sacristy we found, as one might expect, a number of relics and religious objets-d’art.

The Cathedral employs a myriad of people to perform housekeeping and maintenance, and I encountered a worker who was producing some entertaining fireworks while evidently cleaning up one of the huge columns supporting the nave.

We exited from the cathedral via the Patio de los Naranjas, the Courtyard of Oranges. Along with the Giralda, this is one of the few elements surviving from the old Muslim mosque. It was the area where the worshipers performed their ablutions before entering the prayer hall. It is a garden spot, full of orange trees, and the builders of the Cathedral did well to preserve it.

From the Patio we exited to the Calle Alemanes (German Street) through the Puerta del Perdón, the Door of Forgiveness. It is also a holdover from the old mosque, as indicated by its horseshoe shape. Therefore, regardless of whether one is Christian or Muslim, all sins are forgiven when one passes through this door. 😉

In 1248 CE, the Castilian monarch Ferdinand III completed a key step in the Reconquista of Spain from the Muslims by taking the city of Seville. There was a large Jewish population in Seville at that time, and in the following years it became concentrated in a particular quarter of the city known as the Judería. Later, after the expulsion of the Jews by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492, the former Judería became known as the Barrio (neighborhood) de Santa Cruz after a church of that name which was located there. There is still a street in the Barrio named the Calle Judería.

The Barrio Santa Cruz today preserves much of its medieval character; it is a labyrinth of narrow cobbled streets with closely packed three- or four-story houses towering over them, opening at times into small plazas planted with orange trees. We entered the Barrio from the Murillo Gardens, named for the 17th-century Baroque painter Bartolomé Esteban Murillo. At our point of entry we encountered a fragment from the old city wall, dating from the eleventh or twelfth century, when Seville was still under Muslim control, with sections of two conduits running through it to supply water to the city. Once inside the Barrio, we threaded our way through the narrow streets, lined solidly with houses two or three stories tall, many with overhanging balconies, with so little space between the two sides that you could reach across to your neighbors across the street and shake hands with them from the upper stories. This arrangement has its advantages; the tall houses provide shade from the fierce Seville summer sun. But since the streets are limited to pedestrian traffic, one wonders how provisions and supplies are conveyed to the houses – let alone the numerous cafes, bars and hotels located inside the Barrio.

In a little while we arrived at the Plaza de los Venerables, where we found a choice of cafes to stop for a snack. It is also the location of the Hospital de Venerables Sacerdotes, a Baroque building which was originally built in the 17th century as a residence for elderly, poor and disabled priests. It is now the headquarters of a cultural foundation which maintains the historic property and operates an art gallery, the Velázquez Center, devoted to exhibiting paintings by Diego Velázquez and other eminent Spanish painters. Unfortunately it was not open on the day we visited.

On the wall of a house in or near the Plaza de los Venerables I came across a tile plaque which announces that according to popular belief, this was the birthplace of Don Juan Tenorio, a notorious rake and libertine who became the protagonist in two famous Spanish plays, one from the 17th century and the other written much later, in 1844. The earlier play provided the inspiration for Mozart’s 1787 opera Don Giovanni. There is a statue of Don Juan in another square, the Plaza de los Refinadores, but that was not on our route. 

Moving on from Plaza de los Venerables, we shortly found ourselves in Plaza Doña Elvira, the supposed birthplace of another famous literary character, Doña Inés de Ulloa, whose love saves Don Juan from eternal damnation in José Zorrilla’s 1844 play. (I prefer the 17th-century version of the legend, and Mozart’s opera, in which Don Juan is carried off to hell by the ghost of Doña Inés’ father, whom he has slain.) Anyway, Plaza Doña Elvira is a beautiful square graced with colorful tiled benches, orange trees, and fountains, and lined with elegant mansions, hotels and restaurants.

The ultimate goal of our pilgrimage through the Barrio Santa Cruz was the Cathedral, which is on the north side of the Barrio. We exited from the Barrio via the Patio de Banderas, where we passed the gate to the Alcázar, the royal palace, which was not on our tour itinerary but which I managed to visit later in the day.  Finally we emerged onto the Plaza del Triunfo, next to the cathedral, and from there we continued onto the Plaza Virgen de los Reyes, where we lingered for a few moments to enjoy the sights before entering the Cathedral. Awaiting us on the Plaza were a number of horse-drawn taxis; I photographed one whose driver seemed quite proud of his rig, and I would have been pleased to oblige him by taking a ride, but time did not allow it. Aside from the Cathedral itself, there is plenty to see and shoot in the Plaza Virgen de los Reyes. There is a 4-star hotel, Doña María Sevilla, in a 14th-century palace; the Baroque Palacio Arzobispal, the Palace of the Archbishop of Seville, and my favorite fountain in Seville, the Fuente de la Farola – “Fountain of the Streetlight” – which indeed features an impossibly elegant streetlight topping the fountain.

From the Plaza de España, we had to walk a little way to our next objective, the Barrio Santa Cruz, and that gave us a chance to see a little of Maria Luisa Park and its environs.

In addition to the Plaza de España pavilion, a number of other buildings were constructed, some of them to house the exhibits of other countries participating in the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929; these were turned into consulates after the fair closed. Others were repurposed as government offices, museums, etc. One of the latter category was a striking building housing the Parks and Gardens Bureau of the Ayuntamiento (Municipal Government) of Seville. Another was a tourist information kiosk, the Punto de Información Turística Costurero de la Reina, on the Paseo de las Delicias. It is a castle styled building located next to a traffic roundabout containing a monument to Juan Sebastian Elcano, final commander of the first expedition to circumnavigate the earth. (Ferdinand Magellan, the original commander of the expedition, had been killed in the Philippines; only eighteen members of the original expedition made it back to Spain.)

In the Gardens of Catalina de Ribera, near the entrance to the Barrio Santa Cruz, we encountered a monument to Christopher Columbus. Columbus has had a bad press in the Americas in recent years, because of his oppression of Native Americans as well as his underlings, but he still enjoys considerable stature in Spain. The structure we saw seemed to be as much or more a monument to Ferdinand and Isabella, the monarchs who sponsored Columbus’ voyages, as to Columbus himself. It is 23 meters (75 feet) high and consists of a base and two columns, with a pedestal on top. On the pedestal stands a lion, presumably symbolizing the monarchy. Halfway up the columns are the bows of two caravels; on the sides, between the columns, are plaques with the monarchs’ names, one each for Ferdinand and Isabel. On one side of the base of the monument is a medallion with a bust of Columbus; on the other side is the coat of arms of the monarchs’ coat of arms.

A short distance away from the Columbus Monument we came across a venerable old oak tree which must have been growing for hundreds of years. Both Sandie and I couldn’t resist taking multiple pictures of it.