Sevilla

Virgen de las Aguas, El Divino Salvador Collegiate Church

It has long been an ambition to visit the Capital of Andalucía, the fabled City of Seville, and having spent some time there I have made a personal promise to go back for the place is highly seductive as many have discovered before me. Seville is the home of Carmen, Don Juan and Figaro and the final resting place of Christopher Columbus. These are synonymous with the city, but there is much more to this proud and mysterious capital of Andalucía. When you visit this city, you are in the very heart of Andalusian culture. It is an over-used phrase to describe a particular city as ‘steeped in history.’ But Seville is one of those places that truly deserves the accolade. Just walking around the historic old quarter gives a sense of centuries gone by, the spectacular architecture acting as signposts for the rise and fall of past civilisations.

Torre del Oro

I went off to Seville for 5 days early in October to celebrate a Great Anniversary. It's a place I've always wanted to visit as it was joint capital with Marrakech of the Empire of Al-Marrakah and later under Their Catholic Majesties where the Spanish ran New Spain and their other colonies from and where the Spanish Galleons which made it past the pirates landed their booty. This include tobacco for the Royal Tobacco Monopoly and the Royal Tobacco Factory in Sevilla is the setting for Bizet's Opera Carmen which, as a ripping tale of stabbing, sex, betrayal, murder and tuberculosis, is all you want in a night's entertainment! The factory is restored, huge and impressive and is now part of the University of Seville.

This is an amazing City having been Roman, Visigoth, Moorish and then Spanish. The Cathedral and some other churches were originally mosques  and the tower of the Cathedral "La Giralda" is the twin of the Koutabia in Marrakech, both were built by the Almohad Dynasty and the Moorish civilisation still pervades the place Arabs called Al Andalus  and Jews called Sepharad, the Hebrew for Spanish. The Cathedral contains the tomb of "The Admiral" Christopher Columbus for it was from here that Columbus, Magellan and others left to discover the Americas and the Philippines and to produce the first global map after a three year circumnavigation of the world on which Magellan died and where only 18 of the crew of 5 ships survived.

Seville was given a monopoly of the trade with New Spain and in this City Europe would have first seen and tasted tomatoes, potatoes,  avocado, cacao, rum and smoked tobacco. With the loss of their South American Colonies after Napoleon invaded Spain in the 19th Century  Spain was bankrupted by the loss of trade and no place was more bereft than Sevilla the trading port of New Spain which had grown rich and become one of the great cities of Europe which now went into steep decline

Tomb of Christopher Columbus

There is much to see in this unique Spanish City which has echoes of history all around, the walls some of which still survive were built on the orders of Julius Caesar, Hercules is commemorated as the legendary founder of the city in the Alameda de Hercules. The cathedral (the world's largest gothic building), the soaring spire of the Giralda and the nearby Alcázar Palace all bear witness to the glory of Spain's Moorish heritage, while the sweeping arches of the Plaza de España and the Maria Luisa Park remind the visitor of the city's more recent but equally flamboyant past. The architecture in Seville is magnificent and reflects centuries of culture by the variety of people who left their mark; Romans, Jews, Arabs and Gypsies. Inscribed long ago on the Jerez Gate are the words 

“Hercules built me; Caesar surrounded me with walls and towers; the King Saint took me.”

Seville was one of the earliest Moorish conquests (in 712) and, as part of the Caliphate of Córdoba, became the second city of al-Andalus. When the caliphate broke up in the early eleventh century it was by far the most powerful of the independent states (or taifas) to emerge, extending its power over the Algarve and eventually over Jaén, Murcia and Córdoba itself. This period, under a series of three Arabic rulers from the Abbadid dynasty (1023–91), was something of a golden

age. The city’s court was unrivalled in wealth and luxury and was sophisticated, too, developing a strong chivalric element and a flair for poetry – one of the most skilled exponents being the last ruler, al-Mu’tamid, the “poet-king”. But with sophistication came decadence, and in 1091 Abbadid rule was overthrown by a new force, the Almoravids, a tribe of fanatical Berber Muslims from North Africa, to whom the Andalusians had appealed for help against the rising threat from the northern Christian kingdoms.

La Giralda

Despite initial military successes, the Almoravids failed to consolidate their gains in al-Andalus and attempted to rule through military governors from Marrakesh. In the middle of the twelfth century, they were in turn supplanted by a new Berber incursion, the Almohads, who by about 1170 had recaptured virtually all the former territories. Seville had accepted Almohad rule in 1147 and became the capital of this last real empire of the Moors in Spain. Almohad power was sustained until their disastrous defeat in 1212 by the combined Christian armies of the north, at Las Navas de Tolosa. In this brief and precarious period, Seville underwent a renaissance of public building, characterized by a new vigour and fluidity of style. The Almohads rebuilt the Alcázar, enlarged the principal mosque – later demolished to make room for the Christian cathedral – and erected a new and brilliant minaret, a tower over 100m tall, topped with four copper spheres that could be seen for miles around: the Giralda.

Gazpacho, Tapas and Tinto Verano

Plaza Espana

In the shade of the Cathedral and the Alcázar the medieval Jewish quarter (Juderia) of the Barrio Santa Cruz is charming by day or night, with its flower-lined streets, houses adorned with exquisite wrought iron and endless restaurants and taverns. Seville is particularly famous for its many tapas bars where you can enjoy some good company and some excellent food, maybe washed down with some of the locally produced fine sherry wines. The cuisine is likely to include specialties such as gazpacho, fresh fish fried in olive oil, chickpea stew, cured cod fish and bull´s tail. Also worth trying are the butter cookies called “mantecados” or the sweets made from egg-yolks called “Yemas de San Leandro” San Leandro along with San Isidore is a patron saint of Seville. Another feature is you can eat as much or as little as you want for in many restaurants food is available as tapas (small plate) 1/2 Racion (half plate) or Racion (full plate). Be warned,  portions are substantial and in the heat tapas washed down with Tinto Verano (Summer wine, cut with carbonated water, ice and a slice) is more than sufficient and very economical. 

Seville is easy to explore on foot, with all the sights close together. Public transport impresses with a beautiful Metro Line and 3 more on the way by 2017, two tram routes, many streets being pedestrianised and cycle and dedicated busways throughout the city. This along with the many horse drawn carriages gives the impression that Seville is a very well run city that works well. Buses and taxis are cheap and there are also excellent rail connections to Cordoba, Jerez and Cadiz. The city is also known for its theatrically and intensity of life. This is expressed above all in the two festivals of Holy Week (5-12 April) and the Feria de Abril (27 April - 3 May), both are worth a visit. The Provincial Museum of Fine Arts is a Baroque building, formerly the Convent of La Merced and contains paintings by Murillo, Valdes Leal, Zurbaran, El Greco, Alonso Cano and others. A new attraction is the 'Isla Magica' theme park on the old Expo site - great fun for children and adults alike.

A Virgin going for a stroll on Saturday night

In April every year Seville hosts one of the largest parties in Spain, the “Feria de Abril” and people from all over Spain travel to take part in the festivities. The feria was originally just a cattle market, but through the years it has turned out to be one of the greatest popular festivals in Spain. It takes place just after the celebrations for Holy Week, Semana Santa, when some spectacular processions take place. There are over 1000 marquees, known as “casetas” at the feria site and every day at noon a procession called the “Paseo de Caballos” takes place. Girls in their traditional flamenco dresses are escorted through the city in carriages pulled by fine Spanish horses and in the late afternoon the bullfights begin and there is a terrific atmosphere of excitement and the whole city is buzzing!

Seville Cathedral

Seville’s Cathedral was conceived in 1402 as an unrivaled monument to Christian glory – “a building on so magnificent a scale that posterity will believe we were mad”. To make way for this new monument, the Almohad mosque that stood on the proposed site was almost entirely demolished. Meanwhile, the canons, inspired by their vision of future repute, renounced all but a subsistence level of their incomes to further the building. The cathedral was completed in just over a century (1402–1506), an extraordinary achievement, as it’s the largest Gothic church in the world. It is also the third largest church in the world by capacity and the largest if you measure by volume. The word "awe" is overused but entering this church it is more than apt, you simply cannot take it in and the scale of the side chapels and altar pieces alone overwhelms as the altars represent the height of the Spanish Baroque and are amazingly elaborate here and in the other churches of Seville where with the depth of their construction and ornateness they seem to go beyond 3D and in their time for a largely illiterate population would have been both powerful and fearsome vehicles for religious propagandising. Indeed a measure of the scale of the Cathedral is on Saturday night we went into a side church in the complex and it took us some time to realise we were not in the main cathedral as the side church was similar in scale to St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York.

Entry to the cathedral is via the Puerta de San Cristóbal on the building’s south side; you are guided through a reception area and bookshop that brings you into the church to the west of the portal itself. Turn right once inside to head east, where you will soon be confronted by the Tomb of Christopher Columbus (Cristóbal Colón in Spanish). Columbus’ remains were originally interred in the cathedral of Havana, on the island that he had discovered on his first voyage in 1492. But during the upheavals surrounding the declaration of Cuban independence in 1902, Spain transferred the remains to Seville, and the monumental tomb – in the late Romantic style by Arturo Mélida – was created to house them. The mariner’s coffin is held aloft by four huge allegorical figures, representing the kingdoms of León, Castile, Aragón and Navarra; the lance of León should be piercing a pomegranate (now inexplicably missing), symbol of Granada (and the word for the fruit in Spanish), the last Moorish kingdom to be reconquered.

La Giralda

The Giralda tower, before it was embellished with Christian additions, was the mosque’s minaret and the artistic pinnacle of Almohad architecture. Such was its fame that it served as a model for other minarets at the imperial capitals of Rabat and Marrakesh. It was used by the Moors both for calling the faithful to prayer (the traditional function of a minaret) and as an observatory, and was so venerated that they wanted to destroy it before the Christian conquest of the city. This they were prevented from doing by the threat of Alfonso (later King Alfonso X) that “if they removed a single stone, they would all be put to the sword”. Instead, it became the bell tower of the Christian cathedral.  The name of the tower - Spanish for weathervane - stems from the large vane at the top of the belfry, known as giraldillo. The large statue, depicting Faith, shows a woman in a classical Roman attire, holding a shield in the right hand and a palm in the left. The original vane is now installed near the entrance of the cathedral at the Puerta de San Cristobal. The Giralda has served as a template for the design of many structures including the Wrigley Tower in Chicago and the Biltmore in Miami.

La Giralda in chocolate

Real  Alcázar

Rulers of Seville have occupied the site of the Alcázar from the time of the Romans. Here was built the great court of the Abbadids, which reached a peak of sophistication and exaggerated sensuality under the cruel and ruthless al-Mu’tadid – a ruler who enlarged the palace in order to house a harem of eight hundred women, and who decorated the terraces with flowers planted in the skulls of his decapitated enemies. Later, under the Almohads, the complex was turned into a citadel, forming the heart of the town’s fortifications. Its extent was enormous, stretching to the Torre del Oro on the bank of the Guadalquivir.

Parts of the Almohad walls survive, but the present structure of the palace dates almost entirely from the Christian period. Seville was a favoured residence of the Spanish kings for some four centuries after the Reconquest – most particularly of Pedro the Cruel (Pedro I; 1350–69) who, with his mistress María de Padilla, lived in and ruled from the Alcázar. Pedro embarked upon a complete rebuilding of the palace, employing workmen from Granada and utilizing fragments of earlier Moorish buildings in Seville, Córdoba and Valencia. Pedro’s works form the nucleus of the Alcázar as it is today and, despite numerous restorations necessitated by fires and earth tremors, it offers some of the best surviving examples of Mudéjar architecture – the style developed by Moors working under Christian rule.

Levies Patio

The Peacock Arch

Alcázar - Patio of Virgins

Mudéjar art, the survival of Muslim constructive and decorative forms in the territories conquered by the Christians, has its climax in the Royal Alcázar of Seville. A genuine Spanish genre, the Mudéjar style in the palace blends with art form as disparate as  Gothic and Caliphal making this a very unique complex and a visual feast for

the visitor. Started by Muslim Kings the Alcázar is an authentic voyage into the history of art thanks to the determination of many generations of Andalusian, Castilian and Spanish Kings and a monument to the deep respect they professed for their ancestors' work. Having sated your senses passing  through the many courtyards, quarters and ornate  halls the greatest pleasure of the Real Alcázar awaits you; the wonderfully perfumed gardens with their ponds and water features. Seville is a hot city with essentially the same temperature graph as Marrakech and mid-summer temperatures can be insufferable. The Muslims brought oranges and lemons to Europe and here on the site of the Royal orchards were developed the most luxurious display of wealth a ruler could show to his guests, a cool and scented water garden. Indeed whilst the ponds water the gardens the use of water seems profligate with the Arab and later rulers making ample use of the aqueducts originally built by the Romans to draw water from Montes del Norte to water the gardens and groves. The ponds don't just cool and water the gardens but act as a mirror to reflect the exuberant planting and structures.

Doll's Patio

In a hot climate the idea of a secluded garden with water at its centre was a haven from the heat and noise and in fact the word so redolent with meaning and symbolism in our culture, “Paradise” comes from the Persian for a water garden. Here in Seville as in the Marrakech, the joint capital of the Empire of Al-Marrakah which stretched from the Niger to the Guadalquivir the Arabs built a city of gardens and subsequent rulers have followed suit.

See; Gardens of Marrakech

http://daithaic.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/gardens-of-marrakech.html

 The Alcázar gardens are laid out in a number of diverse styles, including French, Italian and Arab. The gardens bear names such as the Garden of the Dance, Garden of the Ladies and the Garden of the Prince. The first area you'll encounter is the Garden of the Pond (Jardín del Estanque). Here a large arch overlooks a rectangular basin, known as the Pond of Mercury. At the centre of the pond is a small fountain with a statue of Mercury, the messenger of the Gods.  The arch is connected to a gallery - the Galeria del Grutesco - which was once part of the original Moorish palace. At the Pond of Mercury a plume of water pours into the pond from a height and the effect is to both cool and refresh the air around the pond.

Fountain and Pool of Mercury

Gallery of Grotesque

Marchena Door

Lion Gateway

The Cathedral, Alcázar and Archivo de Indias in Seville form the Conjunto Monumental and are a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The citation reads;

" Together the Cathedral, Alcázar and Archivo de Indias as a series, form a remarkable monumental complex in the heart of Seville. They perfectly epitomise the Spanish "Golden Age", incorporating vestiges of Islamic culture, centuries of ecclesiastical power, royal sovereignty and the trading power that Spain acquired through its colonies in the New World.

.... constitutes a remarkable testimony to the major stages of the city's urban history (Islamic, Christian, and that of Seville with its associations with the New World), as well as symbolizing a city that became the trading capital with the Indies for two centuries - a time during which Seville was the hub of the Spanish monarchy and played a major role in the colonization of Latin America following its discovery by Columbus.

Seville owes its importance during the 16th and 17th centuries to its designation as the capital of the Carrera de Indias (the Indies route: the Spanish trading monopoly with Latin America). It was the "Gateway to the Indies" and the only trading port with the Indies from 1503 until 1718."

The City of Seville owes its existence  from pre- Roman times to the River Guadalquivir where the Dorians claimed it was founded by Hercules, Romans built a citadel on the site of the Alcázar at the last navigable point on the river for sea going vessels and where the Roman Emperors Trajan and Hadrian were born nearby. The Moors similarly valued its protected port and Imperial Spain gave it its trade monopoly with the Americas as the cargoes of the Spanish Galleons were safe here protected in this inland port from piracy. 

Plaza Toros Maestranza

Today the river has been central to the regeneration of Seville after its seep slumber in the 19th Century. The first ray of hope was the International Fair of 1929 designed to reconnect Seville with the Americas . The optimism of this event was soon overtaken in quick succession by the Great Depression, the Spanish Civil War and World War II. Despite the false start the exposition did put Seville on the map and left it with an impressive legacy of the Plaza Espana, El Prado de San Sebastian and the many original pavilions from the Americas still extant.

Guatemala Pavilion 1929 World Fair

More hopeful signs can be found across the Guadalquivir (or more strictly the canalised section which runs through Seville) where the gaze is led by eye catching bridges designed by Santiago Calatrava (Puente del Alamillo) and the Puente de la Barqueta by Arenas and Pantalerón which acted as gateway to the 1992/93 World Expo. Here on the left bank you will find a modern city with a Science Pavilion, a major stadium, Museum of Contemporary Art, Pavilion of Navigation, Isla Magica and much more worth exploring.  But to get away from the tourist Seville walk across the atmospheric  Puente de Isabel II taking in the views of Seville which it affords. Once this was the first bridge upstream across the Guadalquivir and the only bridge in Seville. The district across the river is called Triana and the bridge leads onto the pedestrianised San Jacinto where the locals come out in the evening for their stroll and to enjoy the many excellently priced restaurants, bodega, coffee and ice cream parlours after the heat of the day.

Puente del Alamillo - Santiago Calatrava

If you wander off the main drag onto side streets like Calle Castile you will get a clue as to why this area is so important to the culture of Seville, Andalucia and indeed the world. For from the bars you will hear guitars playing and plaintive female voices. For this was the Seville of ordinary people who lived and mixed together outside the city and in their poverty and hardship the Jewish, Sufi Islam and Gypsy cultures took from each other and gave Spain and the world Flamenco. This is not like other art forms patronised by the rich and reflecting their values but was the song, music and dance of poor people reflecting joy and hardship, love and loss and the ever present sense and reality of mortality. It is a sensuous and seductive music  whose songs speak of the pain and joy of poor people and whose seven styles of dance take from the cultures which infused Triana. The fusion of song, guitar music and dance which we call Flamenco needs no props for in its heart rending intensity it provides its own stage. As such it has inspired and informed other working class cafe culture such as Portuguese Fado, Argentinean Tango and Rebetiko from the Greek / Ottoman cafe culture. It was the original Blues and there is nothing frivolous about the art of Flamenco for either performers or audience for at its heart it is about a very serious subject: Life.

Flamenco is like its unique birthplace the great and important capital of Andalucía, the magical city of Seville. Like Seville it takes from many cultures, like Seville it will beguile and seduce you and afterwards haunt you with its memory and like Seville it will draw you back for more.