The Alcázar of Seville (Reales Alcázares de Sevilla) is a complex of palaces, courtyards and gardens that dates back to the Moorish days of the 11th Century, well before the Christian conquest of the city in 1248. Despite the Middle Eastern appearance of many of the Alcázar's elements, little remains within the outer walls of any original Moorish structures, with a succession of Castilian monarchs having left their imprints on the complex. Castilian and Spanish royals have spent time here since the Reconquista, and even the present-day royal family uses one of the palaces as an occasional residence. On other occasions the Alcázar shows up in motion pictures as some exotic location or other. Present-day followers of Game of Thrones may recognize parts of it as the Water Gardens of Dorne, a residence of House Martell (featured in Season 5). But the Alcázar is mostly a point of interest for tourists, including us, twice (see the page for our previous visit).

The entrance to the Alcázar is on the Plaza del Triunfo, through the distinctive Lion Gateway.

After paying for admission, a visitor passes through a courtyard called the Lion's Courtyard, eventually encountering a fragment of an original Moorish wall, with arches.

On the other side of the wall is a large courtyard (called the Hunting Courtyard), on the far side of which is a large palace called the Palace of Pedro I.

We didn't go into this palace immediately, opting to first explore the structure to our right, a building in which the Spanish House of Trade was founded. The House of Trade (Casa de Contratación) was an agency established by Queen Isabella in 1503 to manage colonization and trade that was occurring as a result of Spanish exploration, as well as the planning of the expeditions themselves. Some expeditions actually used the nearby Guadalquivir River to get to the sea. One of the House's early officers was the Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci (after whom America was named), who worked as the organization's Chief of Navigation from 1508 until his death in 1512. Prior to the establishment of the agency, the Queen had used the Alcázar structure for exploration-related purposes, including a meeting with Christopher Columbus following his second voyage to the New World (still thought to be the East Indies), in 1496. The House operated from Seville until 1717, when it was moved to Cádiz. The building now houses displays of fans and tiles, plus a chapel in which divine guidance/assistance was once requested for the organization's various endeavors.



We left the House of Trade building and walked over to the Palace of Pedro I. This palace consists of two stories, but we were only able to visit the ground-level floor. The top floor is off limits to mere tourists such as us, as this is the part of the Alcázar which is sometimes used as a residence by the royal family.

Pedro I (or Peter I, for those uncomfortable with the español) ruled Castile and León between 1350 and 1369 (with a short break in 1366-67), and had the palace built between 1364 and 1366. It's hard to know what to think about Pedro, as supporters and detractors have passed seemingly contradictory accounts down through the centuries. Depending on whom you choose to believe, he has become known as either Pedro the Cruel (because of many murders he is supposed to have ordered) or Pedro the Just (by those who maintain the murder thing to be exaggerated, and celebrate the security enjoyed by the people under his rule). He was apparently more just to his Jewish subjects than other rulers of that era were. The English were allied with him and still have a positive view of him – Geoffrey Chaucer visited Castile during his reign and mentioned Pedro's death in mournful terms in The Canterbury Tales. His 1369 death was pretty dramatic – apparently his half-brother and successor Henry of Trastámara unexpectedly stabbed him in the face and elsewhere repeatedly, leaving his body unburied for three days so it could be subjected to ridicule and abuse (maybe there should have been a Henry the Cruel). Pedro left six offspring, by three different women. And he left a pretty cool palace in Seville.

The Palace of Pedro I was built at roughly the same time as some of the Nasrid palaces at the Alhambra in Granada, and shows some stylistic similarities. Not surprising, as Pedro actually had an alliance with the Sultan in Granada, and used some artists from that kingdom (in addition to others from Seville and Toledo) in the building of his palace. The style, a mix of Gothic and Islamic, is known as Mudejar. The palace consists of several smallish, highly-decorated, interconnected rooms surrounding two courtyards or patios. The courtyards are much smaller than the larger courtyards at the Alhambra. The smaller one is called the Dolls' Courtyard, and the larger one, which has a long reflecting pool, is known as either the Damsels' Courtyard or the Maidens' Courtyard.




The surrounding rooms have doorways into the courtyards. Some also have views outward, into some of the Alcázar's gardens (more on these later).


The most luxurious room in the palace, used as a throne room by Pedro and his successors, is called the Hall of the Ambassadors. It has a view of the Damsels' Courtyard’s reflecting pool through an archway, and is surrounded on its other three sides by triple "horseshoe" arches.



A small doorway connects Pedro's palace to the next palace over, the Gothic Palace. This was the first palace built by Seville's Christian conquerors, replacing a Moorish palace that had stood on the site. It was not built by Seville's conquering monarch, Ferdinand III, but by his son, Alfonso X, in 1254, six years after the conquest. It was built in the Gothic style (hence the name), which was fashionable at the time. Possibly influenced by Moorish ideas, its builders made use of decorative tiles.

There are several tapestries in the Gothic Palace, divided between two rooms, called the Vault Room and the Tapestry Room. The map tapestry shown below may not ring any bells geographically, but if you imagine it turned upside-down, it appears to represent the western Mediterranean Sea (and a little of the Atlantic).


Exiting the Gothic Palace took us out into the Alcázar's gardens (and into the blistering summer heat). The first gardens encountered were small and lined up along the outside of the Gothic and Pedro Palaces. They were done in the early 17th Century in the Mannerist style by architect Vermondo Resta.


At the end of these gardens is the Pond Garden, consisting of a large pool (stocked with some kind of fish) with a small bronze statue of Mercury in the middle. A stream of water falls into the pool from a pipe atop the second story of an arcade on the north side of the pool. Along the east side of the pool is a wall called the Grotto Gallery which contains a walkway within its upper level.


The Grotto Gallery extends out into additional gardens. Viewable from its walkway are the Damsels' Garden and the Alcove Garden.



On the other side of the Grotto Gallery are additional gardens which are heavier on plants and trees and lighter on man-made structures.


Having had enough of the Water Gardens of Dorne, we headed back through the Gothic Palace toward the exit into the Plaza del Triunfo.

We returned to our hotel and rested for a while, wrung out from the exertion and the heat of the day. Eventually we decided to get up and explore a little more, as this was our only full day in Seville. Our hotel was not far from a bridge over the Guadalquivir called the Puente de Isabel II. This bridge leads to a neighborhood called the Triana, which we explored for a little while.



It didn't take us long to get tired again, so we returned to the hotel side of the river and found dinner. We returned to the hotel and packed for departure (we'd had a lot of practice at this of late). But there was one more thing we wanted to do in Seville before leaving, which we planned on doing the following morning: a close-up examination of a peculiar Seville structure called the Metropol Parasol.