Seville: The Alcázar of the King Who Lived Like a Sultan

You are in front of the Lion Gate, the entrance to the Real Alcázar of Seville. Look at the reddish, battlemented wall, and above the arch a crowned lion made of tiles, holding a cross. The wall is Almohad, from the twelfth century. The lion is from the late nineteenth century. In that seven-hundred-year gap lies the whole history of this place. There has been a palace here since the eleventh century, when Seville was a Muslim kingdom. Its most famous king, al-Mutamid, was a poet. He wrote verses of love and wine within these walls. In 1248 Ferdinand the Third of Castile conquered Seville. …

You are in the Patio de la Montería. Look ahead at the facade of the Palace of Peter the First: a plaster wall carved like lace, with lobed arches and a jutting wooden eave. It looks like the entrance to a Muslim palace. And it is, in everything except who commissioned it. Peter the First of Castile had it built around 1364. He was a Christian, king of Castile, at war with Aragon and with his own half-brother. And yet he wanted to live like the sultans of Granada. He called in Muslim carpenters, plasterers and master builders, some sent by the sultan of Granada, his ally, and others from To…

You are in the Patio de las Doncellas, the Courtyard of the Maidens, the heart of Peter the First's palace. Look at the long pool in the middle, sunk between two gardens, and around it the arches of carved plaster with their dados of colored tiles. This was the official courtyard: visitors were received here, the king's power was displayed here. The tiles you see on the lower walls are fourteenth century and form geometric patterns that seem never to end. The courtyard's name comes from a legend. It was said that the Muslim kings demanded from the Christians an annual tribute of a hundred ma…

You are in the Hall of the Ambassadors. Look up: a dome of gilded wood, made of thousands of interlocking pieces forming stars. It is called the half orange and dates from 1427. Below, walls covered in carved plaster, with the arms of Castile and León mixed with Arabic inscriptions. This was the throne room. Here, in 1526, Emperor Charles the Fifth married Isabella of Portugal. The most powerful man in Europe was married in the hall of a Mudéjar palace. But this palace holds darker stories. Peter the First had half-brothers, sons of his father and his father's mistress, Leonor de Guzmán. On…

You are in the Patio de las Muñecas, the Courtyard of the Dolls. See how different it is: small, intimate, with fine arches on slender columns. This was the center of the court's private life, the family's place. The name comes from some tiny faces carved at the base of one of the arches. If you find them, tradition says, you will have luck. Look for them: they are very hard to spot. Now, the story of a jewel. In 1362 a king of Granada, Abu Said, known as the Red King, had usurped the throne and was at war with the rightful sultan, Peter's ally. He came to Seville to ask for the protection o…

You are in the Baths of María de Padilla. Look at the vaulted gallery, in half-light, and the long pool reflecting the arches. It is hot outside; down here it is always cool. In fact it is not a bath but a cistern: a rainwater tank under the courtyard above. But the name stuck, because of a woman. María de Padilla was the mistress of Peter the First, the great love of his life. The king had married a French princess, Blanche of Bourbon, for political reasons. He abandoned her a few days after the wedding to go back to María. Blanche spent years locked up in various castles. She died in 1361…

You are in the gardens of the alcázar, by the Mercury Pool. Look at the statue of the god in the middle of the water and, behind it, the long Grotesque Gallery, an ancient wall disguised as a decorative ruin. That wall was part of the Almohad fortifications. In the seventeenth century it was covered in rockwork and figures to turn it into a garden set. You can walk along the top and see the gardens from above. The gardens grew over the centuries: Muslim orchards, Renaissance mazes, pavilions, trick fountains that soaked visitors. Orange trees, palms, myrtle. Water always present. In 2015 th…

You are at the foot of the Giralda. Look at the tower from bottom to top: the lower part, of brick with relief patterns, is Almohad. The upper part, white and with bells, is Renaissance. At the very top a bronze statue turns. The lower part was the minaret of Seville's great mosque, finished around 1198. The call to prayer was made from there. In 1248 the Christians conquered the city and turned the mosque into a cathedral. They put a cross on the minaret. What the alcázar did with the palace, the cathedral did with the mosque: it kept it. In the sixteenth century they added the belfry and …

You are in the Callejón del Agua, the Water Alley. Look at the high wall of the alcázar on one side and on the other the white houses with grilles and flowerpots. It is a narrow, winding street, one of the most photographed in Seville. It is named for what ran inside that wall: the water that supplied the alcázar. It came from an aqueduct the Sevillians called the Caños de Carmona, which brought water from springs kilometers outside the city. The Almohads rebuilt it in the twelfth century. For centuries it was Seville's main water supply, and its first recipient was the king's house. Think …

You are in María Luisa Park. Look at the thick shade of the trees, the ponds, the little squares with tiled benches dedicated to writers. It is Seville's great green lung. This land was part of the gardens of the San Telmo Palace. In 1893 the Infanta María Luisa Fernanda de Borbón, sister of Queen Isabella the Second, donated it to the city. A few years later Seville decided to host a great exposition. The park was redesigned by a French landscape architect, Jean-Claude Forestier, and filled with pavilions. Look for the little square dedicated to the poet Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer: a tree surr…

You are in the Plaza de España. Look at the enormous semicircular brick building, the two towers at either end, the canal with blue and white ceramic bridges, and the tiled benches running along the whole base. It was designed by the Sevillian architect Aníbal González for the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929. Its half-circle shape, open toward the river, was meant as Spain's embrace of its former American colonies. Look at the benches: each is dedicated to a Spanish province, with its map, its coat of arms and a scene from its history, all in tiles. Visitors look for their own province to …

You are at the Centro Cerámica Triana, in the old Santa Ana factory. Look at the tile-covered facade and, inside, the old bottle-shaped wood-fired kilns where the clay was baked. Triana is the neighborhood across the river. A neighborhood of sailors, of Roma, of flamenco and, above all, of potters. The clay of the Guadalquivir has been worked here since Roman times. Seville's patron saints, Justa and Rufina, were by tradition two potter sisters from Triana. They were killed in the third century for refusing to sell their vessels for a pagan cult. Craft and faith, joined from the beginning. …