Alcázar of Seville: Difference between revisions

See also: Alcazar (disambiguation)

Cathedral, Alcázar and General Archive of the Indies in Seville

UNESCO World Heritage Site
The Courtyard of the Maidens
Criteria	Cultural: i, ii, iii, vi
Reference	383
Inscription	1987 (11th Session)

The Alcázar of Seville (Spanish "Reales Alcázares de Sevilla" or "Royal Alcazars of Seville", (Spanish pronunciation: [alˈkaθar])) is a royal palace in Seville, Spain, originally developed by Moorish Muslim kings. The palace is renowned as one of the most beautiful in Spain, being regarded as one of the most outstanding examples of mudéjar architecture found on the Iberian Peninsula. The upper levels of the Alcázar are still used by the royal family as the official Seville residence and are administered by the Patrimonio Nacional. It is the oldest royal palace still in use in Europe, and was registered in 1987 by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, along with the Seville Cathedral and the General Archive of the Indies.

The Reales Alcázares de Sevilla, a monumental complex that retains seven hectares of gardens and seventeen thousand square meters of buildings, was an authentic military and palatine acropolis that brought together several palaces and urban defenses still preserved that cover a wide chronological area between the 11th and 16th centuries with later modifications, having been the main palace of the Abbadí taifa kingdom, seat of one of the three capitals of the Almohad empire, palace of the Castilian monarchy during the Late Middle Ages and Royal House during the Early Modern Age.

Etymology

The term ‘Alcázar’ comes from the Hispano-Arabic word ‘Alqáşr’ meaning ‘Royal House’ or ‘Room of the Prince’ (whether fortified or not).

History

Seville 1588 (Site of Alcazar is to right of Cathedral)

Alcazar de Seville by Henry Fox Talbot, circa 1853/58

Plan of the Alcázar of Seville

• 1-Puerta del León
• 2-Sala de la Justicia y patio del Yeso (cyan)
• 3-Patio de la Montería (pink)
• 4-Cuarto del Almirante y Casa de Contratación (cream)
• 5-Palacio mudéjar o de Pedro I (red)
• 6-Palacio gótico (blue)
• 7-Estanque de Mercurio
• 8-Jardines (green)
• 9-Apeadero
• 10-Patio de Banderas

The Real Alcázar is situated near the Cathedral and the General Archive of the Indies in one of Spain's most emblematic areas.

The Almohades were the first to build a palace, which was called Al-Muwarak, on the site of the modern day Alcázar. It is one of the most representative monumental compounds in the city, the country and the Mediterranean culture. Its influences held within its walls and gardens began in the Arabic period and continued into the late Middle Ages Mudéjar period right through to the Renaissance, the Baroque era, and the 19th century. Subsequent monarchs have made their own additions to the Alcázar.

The palace was the birthplace of Infanta Maria Antonietta of Spain (1729-1785), daughter of Philip V of Spain and Elisabeth Farnese. The king was in the city to oversee the signing of the Treaty of Seville (1729) which ended the Anglo-Spanish War (1727).

The Palace

Puerta del León (Lion Gate)

The whole of the outer primitive enclosure, much of it outside the complex visited, preserves the almost intact perimeter walls.

The current tourist visit presents a route that does not take into account the historical perspective, being much more logical to understand the origin and evolution of the alcázar if it begins where it ends, from the north walls and the Patio de Banderas, first occupied zone, and go progressing from there to the interior.

Puerta del León

The original gate is blinded but refurbished as part of a conference room integrated in a house of the mentioned patio, although it can neither be visited nor is under the control of the Patronage of the Alcázar in spite of its historical importance.

The current entrance to the monument is made by the Puerta del León, practiced in the Arab walls of the 12th century, which in Islamic times was called "de la Montería" because it was the entrance to the courtyard. It takes its name from the heraldic symbol located on the arch of its arch, the main entrance to the Alcázar takes its name from the 19th century tile-work inlaid above it, a crowned lion holding a cross in its claws and bearing a Gothic script.

Across this hallway, it reach the Patio del León.

Hall of Justice

To his right are the Hall of Justice or Councils and Patio del Yeso, one of the examples of Almohad civil architecture that are preserved in the country, the remains of the Mexuar, where the council of viziers met, and believed Which was used as a royal abode in the days of Alfonso X, Alfonso XI and Peter of Castile, who would use it while building his new palace, with the Courtyard of the Croisser and the Room of the Snail as a public part of the whole.

The Hall of Justice is a square floor room to which Alfonso XI added a new Mudéjar deck that still retains, but remained a meeting place of council members during the Christian monarchy.

Patio del Yeso

The Patio del Yeso preserves part of the exterior aspect of the Almohad period, although it is modified with respect to the rooms that were around it. It has a quadrangular plant with a central pool. In its west wing only conserves the rest of the arc of access because after it the mentioned Hall of Justice was raised. The north arcade is blinded, composed of three horseshoe arches on central columns framed by alfiz on which appear three windows of arches in horseshoe. The southern archery is the best preserved, composed of a central arch pointed polilobulated with brick pillars flanked by three others on each side, smaller, also lobulated, leaning on marble columns and on which a rich Sebka decoration is developed, giving way to a rectangular room with alcoves at the ends.

Back on the Patio of the León, on its south side are three open spans on an old canvas of the taifa walls, an access in the form of an arch of triumph. According to some authors, the Castilian judiciary court was set up under the central arch, which was intended for the common people, giving the area a character of Christian Mexuar, while the sides, blinded, would shelter the soldiers who guarded, Although in 1939 they set out to give greater visibility to the Patio de la Montería and the facade of the Palace of Peter of Castile.

Patio de la Montería

The Patio de la Montería is named after the hunters accompanying the monarch in his hunting parties and occupies, in part, the area of the patio that articulated the residential buildings of the Almohad period.

It has a trapezoidal floor and organizes the most important spaces of the Alcázar, with the Palace of Peter of Castile in front, a low portico with a gallery of the 16th century to the right, behind which is located the Patio of the Casa de Contratación, and a simulated porch that is from the 18th century to the left with access to the Patio of the Croisser, before the Gothic palace. The brick arches on both sides of the portal of the Palace of Peter of Castile seem to indicate that its perimeter articulation in the 14th century could have presented a porticoed aspect of arches and brick pillars, although it is not known if the project came to materialize or remained truncated with the murder of Peter.

The gallery on the right, by Antón Sánchez Hurtado in the 16th century, has double height of semicircular arches on Tuscan columns in the lower part and an upper glazed with Ionic columns, with a staircase next to the facade of the Palace of Peter of Castile and access to the High Palace, the area now reserved for use by the Spanish Crown or to accommodate illustrious guests.

Patio de las Doncellas

Moorish architecture inside the Alcázar

The name, meaning "The Courtyard of the Maidens", refers to the legend that the Moors demanded 100 virgins every year as tribute from Christian kingdoms in Iberia.

The lower level of the Patio was built for King Peter I and includes inscriptions describing Peter as a "sultan". Various lavish reception rooms are located on the sides of the Patio. In the center is a large, rectangular reflecting pool with sunken gardens on either side. For many years, the courtyard was entirely paved in marble with a fountain in the center. However, historical evidence showed the gardens and the reflecting pool were the original design and this arrangement was restored. However, soon after this restoration, the courtyard was temporarily paved with marble once again at the request of movie director Ridley Scott. Scott used the paved courtyard as the set for the court of the King of Jerusalem in his movie Kingdom of Heaven. The courtyard arrangement was converted once more after the movie's production.

The upper story of the Patio was an addition made by Charles V. The addition was designed by Luis de Vega in the style of the Italian Renaissance although he did include both Renaissance and mudéjar plaster work in the decorations. Construction of the addition began in 1540 and ended in 1572.

Los Baños de Doña María de Padilla

Los Baños de Doña María de Padilla

The "Baths of Lady María de Padilla" are rainwater tanks beneath the Patio del Crucero. The tanks are named after María de Padilla, the mistress of Peter the Cruel.

La Casa de Contratación

Casa de Contratación (House of Trade) beside the Patio de la Monteria

The Casa de Contratación (House of Trade) was established in 1503 by the Catholic Monarchs to regulate trade with the New World colonies after the discovery of America. The Casa controlled the governmental apparatus of Spanish exploration and colonization, and consequently dealt with legal disputes concerning trade with the Americas. Its administration buildings were located near the Patio de la Monteria and included the chapel where Columbus met with Ferdinand and Isabella after his second voyage. The chapel today houses paintings of some of the most celebrated voyages of the discoverers, such as The Virgin of the Navigators, one of the first paintings to depict the discovery of the Americas and one of the earliest paintings to depict Columbus, and Magellan's first voyage around the World.

To accommodate that institution, the city of Seville was chosen. That same year, construction and arrangement of the necessary buildings was ordered. What survives today of the old House of Trade is only part of the original construction, which included a number of buildings that stretched from the current Patio de la Monteria to Plaza de la Contratación, where it had its main façade. This area included, among others, the Admiral's room or Chapter House, with two two-story buildings, a chapel, another area of warehouses and rooms around a courtyard, next to the Plaza de la Contratación, this part being demolished in 1964. In 1717, the agency moved to the city of Cádiz. Since 1793, when the Casa de Contratación was shut down, all its former departments were merged into the Alcázar .

In this right wing of the Patio de la Montería, where the Casa de Contratación de Indias was, the Admiral's Room is conserved, with an initial hall of rectangular plant with wooden roof decorated with paintings of the 19th and 20th centuries, property of Patrimonio Nacional, which today is used for official and cultural events, which has another room in which is exhibited a collection of thirty-seven fans donated to the city by Doña Gloria Trueba, and the one known as Hall of Audiences, a square floor room whose walls present the shields of the admirals of the Castilian crown, since Ferdinand III of Castile founded in Seville the Royal Armada of Castile, until Christopher Columbus and a cover of wood painted of 16th century.

Later it became a chapel, presided over by an altarpiece of the Virgin of the Navigators of Alejo Fernández, dated between 1531 and 1536, with the first known representation of the discovery of America, where Christopher Columbus and Emperor Charles V are identified.

Patio of the Casa de Contratación

There is also the so-called Patio of the Casa de Contratación, although, despite its historical importance, as a vestige of an old Almohad palace restructured by Peter of Castile, it is not part of the visitable circuit of the Alcázar because it is integrated in the current building of the Ministry of Interior of the Junta de Andalucía, offices closed to tourism. Preserves remains recovered Almohad north archery, with a large central poly-lobed arch, leaning on thick pilasters flanked by double smaller spans separated by pillars delimiting large cloths of Sebka calada. The portico of the south hall has not reached us, perhaps destroyed in the 16th century to adapt the space as the Hall of the Treasury, deposit of American gold and silver.

Alfonsí Palace

To the left of the Patio de la Montería is the Gothic, Alfonsí Palace of the Croisser or Room of the Snail, which with all these names is known, commanded to build by Alfonso X in 1254 in the Patio del Crucero of the known as enclosure II of the alcazaba , The main space of the Almohad palaces, remaining the rest of buildings, in the enclosure III, hardly without alterations throughout the following century.

The patio, with a longitudinal axis oriented north-south, was a large rectangular garden, the largest of the Almohad and the largest known in Al-Andalus, above the Palace of Comares of the Alhambra. According to archaeological studies, it had a perimeter gallery at the height of the rooms occupied by the north and south, without knowing for sure if the east and west sides, the longest, had alcoves, and a garden in transept more than four and a half meters away, which was reached by stairs also from the north and south sides, divided into four parterres by two platforms in crosshead with swimming pools. In the center it is believed that there was a large fountain or a pavilion that would have been built in the middle of the 12th century, in the time of Ibn Mardanis.

The Christian modification consisted in transforming the domestic character of the main residence of the Sevillian Almohad Caliphas into a great courteous palace, more thought for the movement of a numerous entourage than as a royal dwelling, the meeting place of the poetic court of Alfonso X, where important works like the Cantigas de Santa María or books of history, law and science arose.

The southern room of the large patio was modified to form two parallel cradles flanked by two other perpendiculars covered with ribbed vaults and four angular towers with spiral staircases, hence one of their names, which led to a large crenellated terrace perhaps it did the functions of place of arms. To allow direct communication between the north and south wings, now protocol spaces, without the need to use the narrow perimeter platforms or go down to the garden, also raised a large central platform supported on a vaulted structure in which was lodged the longitudinal pool, with small corridors at the sides of it forming two parallel passages. The design was completed with other transverse platforms, reproducing in height the design of the inferior croisser that existed in the Islamic garden.

Gothic Hall

One of the parallel cradles is called Gothic Hall, of Vaults or of Parties, the latter meaning adopted from the celebration of the royal wedding of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and Isabella of Portugal in March 1526. During the reign of Philip II was remodeled to give it a more Renaissance style, replacing the pillars by corbels, painting the vaults and covering the walls with high ceramic azulejos of the potter Cristóbal de Augusta with heraldic decoration, grotesques, caryatids, and allegories of the cardinal virtues, Strenght, Justice, Temperance and Prudence, who pay homage to the emperor, whom they present as a classic hero, and his wife.

Tapestry Hall

In parallel to this Gothic Hall is the Tapestry hall, rebuilt in a new plant after the earthquake of 1755 with epicenter in Lisbon by order of Charles III. It has a rectangular floor plan with vaulted ceilings with Baroque yeserias. It receives that name because in the time of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor was decorated with the series of great tapestries of the Conquest of Tunisia in 1535, made from 1546 on behalf of Mary of Hungary, sister of the emperor, according to cartons of Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen and Pieter Coecke van Aelst and fabrics in the Brussels workshop of Willem de Pannemaker. But in the 18th century they were so badly damaged that in 1740 Philip V commissioned some copies, which have been in this room since 1929, while the originals, owned by Patrimonio Nacional and restored in 2000, are part of the collection of the Madrid's Royal Palace.

Other sections

• Patio de las Muñecas
• Dormitorio de los Reyes Moros
• Salón de Embajadores, 1427

Detail Gallery

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The Gardens

Galeria de Grutescos

All the palaces of Al Andalus had garden orchards with fruit trees, horticultural produce and a wide variety of fragrant flowers. The garden-orchards not only supplied food for the palace residents but had the aesthetic function of bringing pleasure. Water was ever present in the form of irrigation channels, runnels, jets, ponds and pools.

The gardens adjoining the Alcázar of Seville have undergone many changes. In the 16th century during the reign of Philip III the Italian designer Vermondo Resta introduced the Italian Mannerist style. Resta was responsible for the Galeria de Grutesco (Grotto Gallery) transforming the old Muslim wall into a loggia from which to admire the view of the palace gardens.

The Alcázar Gardens viewed from Galeria de Grutescos

Mercury Pond

View of the Mercury Pond, the reservoir and the Gallery of the Grotesque.

Taking the form of a large pond, located at the highpoint of the palace and thus higher than the rest of the gardens, the reservoir is presided over by the figure of the god Mercury, designed by Diego de Pesquera and cast by Bartolomé Morel in 1576. These men also contributed railings with shields with lions at their corners and 18 balls with pyramidal finials surrounding the pond. All these elements were originally gilded, but only traces remain of the coating. The backdrop is the "Gallery of the Grotesque," which was constructed on an old Almohad wall. Further contributions and a change decoration were made by Vermondo Resta around 1612, making this the most Mannerist section of the Alcázar. It consists of rustically worked stones of different types that simulate marine rocks. These stone elements form quadrangular spaces, and at the halfway point the walls are painted red to mimic red marble. The walls also show mythological figures and exotic birds, painted by Diego de Esquivel in the seventeenth century. The top of gallery is decorated with spires in the form of castle crenelation. In the front of the pond, there is a fountain with a recently restored water organ from the seventeenth century.

In popular culture

• In 1962 the Alcázar was used as a set for Lawrence of Arabia.
• The Patio de las Doncellas was used as the set for the court of the King of Jerusalem in the 2005 movie Kingdom of Heaven.
• Part of the fifth season of Game of Thrones was shot in several locations in the province of Seville, including the Alcázar.

See also

• History of Medieval Arabic and Western European domes

External links

• InFocus: Alcázar of Seville (Sevilla, Spain) at HitchHikers Handbook
• Images of the Alcázar in Seville - 105 images with good descriptions of the Alcázar and its history.
• Casa de la Contratación - in depth historical article.
• El Real Alcázar de Sevilla (In Spanish, English and French)
• UNESCO World Heritage