Touring Sevilla

We met our guide Virginia at 9:30am, and by the end of the tour at 3:00pm we could see that you definitely need a whole day to see Sevilla.  I should mention that this stretch of touring was without a stop and without lunch.  For those who know me, this was quite a challenge!

We tried to start with the Alcazar, the Royal Palace that had been built and rebuilt over many generations.  But the waiting line was extremely long, so we decided to alter the order of our events.  I'm continually wondering how the world will handle more tourists.  You see a line like this for a major attraction and it just feels like it is at capacity.

We instead took our carriage ride around town, which turned out to be very nice to do in the cooler morning.  We went through the magnificent park near the palace.  Most impressive were the buildings created for the 1929 exposition, which was like a Worlds Fair.  But 1929 turned out to be a pretty bad year to mount an expensive fair.  They built several enormous and beautiful buildings, and then when the Great Depression came, the fair was a big bust because nobody could afford to come.  It took them 50 years to pay off the buildings. 

The architecture here is very cool - it even has it's own name, Mudejar, which is a combination of Islamic and Christian elements.  It includes the keyhole arches, tiles and geometrics of Islamic Art along with some Gothic and Renaissance elements and figurative Christian paintings and sculptures.  Basically, it's a Christian church built in the Moorish style by Moorish artisans.

After the carriage ride, we checked back at the Alcazar and could get in with only a 30 minute wait.  Inside, there was room after room of beautiful tiles and plaster decoration. Our guide showed us in the throne room how the king used natural daylight to advantage in greeting his guests, keeping his face in the dark and theirs in the light.  We saw the place where Amerigo Vespuci trained sailors to cross the Atlantic and where Christopher Columbus was chartered to set sail for India. (Of course he mistakenly found North America and never realized it in his lifetime).

After the palace we wandered through the "Jewish quarter".  Nothing is Jewish about the quarter now since there haven't been any Jews since we were kicked out in 1492.  The one place that they know used to have a synagogue now has a very large wrought iron cross. 

Our guide was quite eloquent about the 800 years of Muslim rule where Muslims, Jews and Christians lived together in general harmony.  This all ended when the Christians took over and Ferdinand and Isabella decided to unify under one religion.  Virginia said that she thought it was not so much AGAINST those other religious but much more FOR a unified population.  That's why they favored conversion.  However, Lenny and I were not so sure that the Jews of the time who were subjected to the Inquisition would have appreciated the distinction.

visited the Cathedral next, a giant structure that is one of the largest cathedrals in the world. It was built on the site of a huge Mosque which is why it has an unusual shape for a church: rectangle, not cross.  It also has a courtyard before the entrance, which I've never seen before.  The ceilings were enormous and there was a spectacular gold-covered altar.  It was cool to see the tomb of Christopher Columbus, too.

We then trudged up to the top of the bell tower (35 levels) for a marvelous view.  After lunch (finally!), we separated.  Lenny and I visited the Archives, which includes all the documentation of the Spanish conquering of the new world.  It's an incredible building, all marble including the floors and ceilings so that the documents cannot be destroyed by fire.  They had quite a nice display about the Spanish involvements in wars in the 19th century.  I think it's a testament to how much Lenny and I love museums that we totally enjoyed it even though all the signage was in Spanish!

Donna