5 Days in Seville

Start early, before the tour groups, in the maze of whitewashed lanes east of the Cathedral. This was the judería, the Jewish quarter of medieval Seville, until a massacre in 1391 destroyed the community, a century before the Jews were expelled from Spain. Almost nothing Jewish survives, but the street plan does: alleys so narrow that neighbors can touch hands across them, built to keep out the summer sun.

Walk the Callejón del Agua along the Alcázar wall, then lose yourself between Plaza de Santa Cruz, with its iron cross, and the little square of Doña Elvira. Look through the iron gates into the tiled courtyards: they're the private gardens of Seville, and many are planted with orange and lemon trees.

The Real Alcázar is the oldest royal palace in Europe still in use: the Spanish royal family stays on the upper floor when they're in town. It was begun by the Moors, but the most beautiful part, the Palace of King Pedro I, was built for a Christian king between 1356 and 1364 by Muslim craftsmen from Granada and Toledo, in the style called Mudéjar, all carved plaster, tiles and cedar ceilings. Its inscriptions praise Pedro in Arabic and Allah in the same breath.

Don't rush the Courtyard of the Maidens, the Hall of the Ambassadors with its golden dome, where Charles V married Isabella of Portugal in 1526, or the gardens, which go on for hectares, with fountains, pavilions, peacocks and a tiled underground bath. Game of Thrones filmed the Water Gardens of Dorne here.

The plain, square Renaissance building between the Cathedral and the Alcázar was built in the 1580s as an exchange for the merchants who traded with the Americas, so they would stop doing business on the Cathedral steps. In 1785, King Charles III turned it into the Archivo General de Indias, the archive of the whole Spanish empire in the Americas and the Philippines: some 80 million pages, from Columbus's letters to maps of cities that no longer exist.

Upstairs, a changing selection of documents is on show under a beautiful ceiling of carved wood. It's free and rarely crowded.

Back in Santa Cruz, Las Teresas, on the corner of Calle Santa Teresa, is the kind of bar Seville does best: hams hanging from the ceiling, old bullfight posters, and a counter where you stand and order tapa by tapa while the barman chalks your bill on the wood. Order a plate of jamón ibérico de bellota, from black Iberian pigs that spend their last months eating acorns in the oak forests of Huelva, just west of Seville, and a cold fino.

Then add a solomillo al whisky (pork loin in a garlic and whisky sauce, a Seville classic) and espinacas con garbanzos, spinach and chickpeas spiced with cumin, which is said to go back to Moorish cooking.

When Christian Castile took Seville in 1248, it turned the great mosque into a church. In 1401, according to tradition, the chapter decided to replace it with "a church so large that those who see it finished will think we were mad", and the result is the largest Gothic cathedral in the world. Inside, look for the gigantic gilded altarpiece, said to be the largest in Christendom, and the tomb of Christopher Columbus, carried by four bronze heralds representing the kingdoms of Castile, León, Aragon and Navarre. DNA studies, the latest in 2024, support the claim that some of his bones really are here, though the Dominican Republic insists it has him too.

Then climb the Giralda, the minaret of the old mosque, built from 1184 to 1198, with a Renaissance bell tower added on top in the 1500s. Instead of stairs it has 35 ramps, wide enough, it's said, for the muezzin to ride up on horseback to call the prayer. Leave by the Patio de los Naranjos, the mosque's old courtyard of orange trees.

Flamenco was born in western Andalusia, among the Gitano (Roma) communities of Seville, Jerez and Cádiz, and Seville is still one of its capitals. The big tablaos put on polished dinner shows, while the small venues are closer to the real thing: one singer, one guitarist, one dancer and an audience of 50 people a few meters away.

Casa de la Memoria, in an old courtyard house on Calle Cuna, puts on nightly hour-long shows for about 24 EUR, without dinner. The Museo del Baile Flamenco, founded by the dancer Cristina Hoyos, has shows for about 29 EUR. Book either a day ahead. For the local version, cross to Triana after midnight to Casa Anselma, a tiny, packed bar with no stage, no fixed show and no entry fee, where people sing and dance sevillanas until late.

On the way south, you pass the Royal Tobacco Factory, an enormous 18th-century building where thousands of women once rolled cigars, among them, in Mérimée's story and Bizet's opera, Carmen. It's now part of the university.

Then comes Plaza de España, a vast half-circle of brick, marble and tiles built by Aníbal González as the centerpiece of the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929. Along its curve are 48 tiled alcoves, one for each Spanish province, with a map and a scene from its history, and in front runs a canal crossed by four bridges, one for each of the old kingdoms of Spain. Rent a rowing boat on the canal, and look for your favorite province's bench.

Around the square is the Parque de María Luisa, once the private garden of a palace, given to the city in 1893 and redesigned for the 1929 Exposition. It's a shady jungle of palms, orange trees and ponds full of ducks, with tiled benches and fountains, and the best place in Seville to escape the heat.

At its far end, Plaza de América is lined with three of the Exposition's pavilions, in Mudéjar, Renaissance and Gothic Revival style. The Archaeological Museum in one of them has been closed for renovation since 2020, but the Museum of Popular Arts and Customs opposite, in the Mudéjar pavilion, is open and almost free, and the square itself, full of pigeons, is worth the walk.

The twelve-sided Torre del Oro, the "Golden Tower", was built by the Almohads in 1220-21 to guard the river. A chain once ran from it across the water to a twin tower on the Triana bank, to stop ships sailing upstream. The name probably comes from the golden shine of its tiles and plaster, not from the gold of the Americas that later arrived in front of it.

Inside is a small naval museum, and the terrace on top has views up and down the river. The river cruises leave from the quay below.

Across the road from the Torre del Oro is the Hospital de la Caridad, a charity hospice founded in the 1670s by Miguel Mañara, a nobleman with a wild youth who is often said to have inspired the legend of Don Juan, and who gave his life and fortune to burying the dead and caring for the poor. Its church is a baroque masterpiece built to make you think about death.

By the door hang Juan de Valdés Leal's two Hieroglyphs of Our Last Days: a skeleton snuffing out a candle over a globe, and a bishop's corpse rotting in its coffin, painted so vividly that Murillo is said to have held his nose. Murillo's own paintings of charity hang opposite.

Walk a few streets into the Arenal, the old harbor district between the Cathedral and the Guadalquivir. Lunch is pescaíto frito, fried fish, which in Seville means a paper cone or a plate of cazón en adobo (dogfish marinated in vinegar, cumin and paprika), puntillitas (baby squid) and boquerones (anchovies), fried in olive oil until crisp.

Freiduría La Isla on Calle García de Vinuesa has been frying fish since the 1930s. Order by weight, add a beer, and eat standing up or at one of the few tables. Next door, Casa Morales, an old wine shop from 1850 with giant clay jars behind the bar, is the place for a glass of wine after.

A few minutes north on the riverbank is the white and ocher Plaza de toros de la Maestranza, built over more than a century from 1761 and one of the oldest and most important bullrings in Spain. Bullfighting is deeply divisive in Spain today: for some it's culture and art, for many others cruelty, and support has been falling for years.

You don't have to see a fight to understand the place. The guided tour takes you into the ring, the chapel where bullfighters pray before going out, and a museum of costumes and posters. The main season runs from Easter Sunday through the April Fair and May, with a second fair, San Miguel, in late September.

Cross the iron Triana Bridge, finished in 1852, into Triana, the neighborhood on the far bank that thinks of itself as a separate town. This was the quarter of sailors, potters and Gitano flamenco families, and the sailors of Magellan's expedition, which left Seville in 1519 to sail around the world, prayed here before they left. Just over the bridge, the Mercado de Triana stands on the ruins of the Castle of San Jorge, the old seat of the Inquisition.

Walk Calle Pureza to the Capilla de los Marineros, home of the Esperanza de Triana, the Virgin who is the Macarena's great rival at Holy Week, and to Santa Ana, the oldest parish church in Seville, known as the cathedral of Triana. Calle Alfarería and Calle Callao are still lined with tile workshops; most close by evening, as do the market stalls (at 14:30), but the tapas bars inside the market stay open until late.

Calle Betis runs along the river, with terraces facing the old town across the water. At sunset, the Torre del Oro and the Giralda turn pink and the whole of Seville seems to come out for a drink. Order a tinto de verano, red wine with lemon soda, which is what Sevillanos actually drink in summer instead of sangria.

For dinner, Casa Cuesta on Plaza del Altozano is an old Triana bar famous for its cola de toro, oxtail stewed for hours in red wine, the dish bullring restaurants used to make after a fight.

Seville's Golden Age wasn't only about money: it produced Velázquez, Murillo, Zurbarán and Valdés Leal, and the Museo de Bellas Artes, in a former convent around three courtyards, is the place to see them. Murillo's tender Madonnas fill the old convent church, Zurbarán's monks stand in their white habits, and Valdés Leal's dark, dramatic canvases prepare you for his paintings of death at the Hospital de la Caridad.

It's one of the best Old Master collections in Spain and is almost never crowded. On Sunday mornings, artists sell their paintings in the square outside.

On Calle Cuna, behind an ordinary front door, is the house of a countess who collected antiquities in the early 1900s, and paved her patio and ground floor with Roman mosaics brought from Itálica, the Roman city you'll see on day five. It's sometimes called the best-paved house in Europe. The walls are tiled, the ceilings carved, and the courtyard is a perfect Sevillian patio, with a fountain, ferns and archways.

Ten minutes east, the Casa de Pilatos is the grandest private palace in Seville, still owned by the Dukes of Medinaceli. Its builder made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1519, and legend says the house copies Pontius Pilate's: the name stuck, and it became the starting point of Seville's Way of the Cross. In reality it's a dazzling mix of Mudéjar plasterwork, Gothic balustrades, Renaissance fountains and Roman statues, with some of the finest tiles in the city.

A few streets north, El Rinconcillo has been pouring drinks since 1670, which makes it the oldest bar in Seville. It looks the part: dark wood, tiles, hams, bottles to the ceiling and a long marble counter where your bill is still chalked on the wood in front of you.

Order the classics: espinacas con garbanzos, pavía de bacalao (salt cod fried in batter), carrillada (braised pork cheek) and a plate of chacinas, the cured sausages of the Sierra, with aceitunas aliñadas, Seville's own marinated olives. It's busy and touristy at peak times, and it's still worth it.

The Palacio de las Dueñas belongs to the House of Alba, one of the oldest noble families in Spain, and it was the favorite home of the famous, flamboyant Duchess Cayetana, who died in 2014. Its patios of orange trees and bougainvillea, its Mudéjar halls and its rooms full of family portraits, flamenco dresses and bullfighting posters feel like a house that's still lived in, because it is.

The poet Antonio Machado was born here in 1875, in a flat his family rented in the palace, and he later wrote that his childhood was "a patio in Seville and a bright orchard where the lemon ripens".

Walk north to the Basilica of the Macarena, by the last surviving stretch of Seville's medieval walls. Inside is the Virgin of Hope, the Macarena, the most loved religious image in the city: a 17th-century carved Madonna with glass tears on her cheeks, dressed in velvet and jewels.

At Holy Week, she leaves the basilica on a float carried by dozens of men hidden underneath, around midnight on Holy Thursday, and spends the whole night and most of the next morning in the streets, surrounded by tens of thousands of people. Even if you're not here for the processions, seeing her up close explains why they matter so much to Seville. On the way back, look into the church of San Lorenzo, home of Jesús del Gran Poder, "the Lord of Seville", and have a tapa at Bar Eslava next door, one of the city's most praised.

The Metropol Parasol, known to everyone as the Setas, "the mushrooms", is a giant wooden canopy over Plaza de la Encarnación, designed by the German architect Jürgen Mayer and opened in 2011. Locals hated it at first and now mostly love it. Underneath is a market and a museum of the Roman and Moorish ruins found when it was built.

A lift takes you up to a winding walkway on top, the best place to watch the sun go down over the rooftops and the Cathedral. From April to October, after dark, a light show plays on the structure.

Then walk ten minutes north to the Alameda de Hércules, a long, tree-lined square with Roman columns at each end, where the city's most relaxed bars and terraces stay busy until late.

In the 10th century, Córdoba was the capital of an independent caliphate and one of the largest cities in Europe, and its Great Mosque was the second-largest in the world. Walk into its forest of more than 800 columns, joined by red and white striped double arches, and it seems to go on forever. The mihrab, the prayer niche, is covered in gold mosaics made by craftsmen sent from Byzantium.

After the Christian conquest in 1236 it became a cathedral, and in the 1500s a whole Renaissance church was built in the middle of it. When Emperor Charles V saw the result, he is said to have complained that they had destroyed something unique to build something you could find anywhere.

Around the Mezquita are the narrow white lanes of the old Jewish quarter, where the philosopher Maimonides was born in 1138. The little synagogue, built in 1315, is one of only three medieval synagogues left in Spain. Walk the Calleja de las Flores, a tiny lane of flowerpots that frames the Mezquita's bell tower.

Córdoba is the city of patios: its houses are built around courtyards packed with geraniums, and in May the owners open them to visitors for the Patios Festival. Some can be visited all year.

Córdoba gave Spain salmorejo, a thick, cold cream of tomato, bread, garlic and olive oil, topped with chopped egg and ham. It's richer than gazpacho and in Córdoba it's practically sacred: try it here, then compare it with the versions in Seville.

Have it in one of the old taverns of the Judería or around the Plaza de la Corredera, along with flamenquín, a roll of pork and ham fried in breadcrumbs, and a glass of Montilla-Moriles wine, the local fortified wine.

End the day on the Roman Bridge, rebuilt many times since the 1st century BC, which crosses the Guadalquivir, the same river that flows through Seville. From the far side, by the Calahorra tower, you get the classic view of the Mezquita rising above the river and the old town.

With more time, the Alcázar of the Christian Monarchs by the river and Medina Azahara, the ruined 10th-century palace city of the caliphs outside town, are worth a second day. Trains back to Seville run until late in the evening.

Bar El Comercio on Calle Lineros has been serving breakfast since 1904, with tiles on the walls and old men reading the paper at the counter. Order churros con chocolate: in Seville, the thin, crisp loops are often called calentitos, and the thicker ones papas. Dip them in a cup of hot chocolate thick enough to stand a spoon in.

Or have breakfast the way most Sevillanos do: a toasted mollete (a soft bread roll) with olive oil and crushed tomato, and a café con leche.

Nine kilometers north of Seville, Itálica was founded in 206 BC as the first Roman city in Spain, and it was the home of the families of two emperors, Trajan and Hadrian. Hadrian later rebuilt it lavishly, with wide streets, grand houses and one of the largest amphitheaters in the Roman Empire, which could hold some 25,000 people.

Walk into the amphitheater, which was used to film the Dragonpit in Game of Thrones, then through the streets of the new town to the houses, whose floors still have their mosaics: birds, the planets and Neptune. The old town lies under the modern village of Santiponce.

Back in town, have lunch at Bodeguita Antonio Romero, near the Maestranza, which is famous for one thing: the montadito de pringá. Pringá is the meat left over from a puchero, the slow-cooked stew of beef, pork, chicken, chorizo and black pudding, mashed together and pressed into a small toasted roll. It's the most Sevillian thing you can eat.

Add a serranito, Seville's own sandwich of grilled pork, cured ham and a fried green pepper.

Across the river on the island of La Cartuja is the 15th-century Carthusian monastery of Santa María de las Cuevas. Columbus stayed here while planning his voyages, and his remains were kept here for decades after his death. In the 1800s it became a ceramics factory, and its tall bottle-shaped kilns still stand in the cloisters.

Today it houses the Andalusian Center of Contemporary Art, so you get medieval cloisters, factory chimneys and contemporary art in one visit. The rest of the island was the site of the 1992 World's Fair.

For the last night, do what Sevillanos do: move from bar to bar, one or two tapas and a drink in each. The streets around the Plaza de la Alfalfa and the Plaza del Salvador, between the Setas and the Cathedral, are full of bars, and on a warm night the crowds spill out into the squares with a glass in hand.

Finish with a glass of vino de naranja, sweet wine flavored with Seville orange peel, at Taberna Álvaro Peregil on Calle Mateos Gago, a tiny bar with a view of the Giralda.