Day 24 Seville Cathedral

Three items on the agenda today: the cathedral, the Archivo de Indias right next door, and the Plaza de Espagna. The day started out like yesterday, overcast and cool, but most cl,eared up my arl,y afternoon and got up to about 28° mid afternoon, although it didn't feel like it - must be quite dry. As I write this at 6 pm, we are experiencing our first rain on the plain in Spain, although it is more like a gentle sprinkle.

Overnight it had occurred to me that all the trudging on foot back and forth between the hotel and the Centre was silly, as they have a very good public transit system here in Sevilla. Consequently we elected to use the bus today. Our concierge kindly pointed out which ones to get coming and going and where to get on/off - a very helpful chap. This worked out really well as we arrived at the cathedral in short order and good shape. By good fortune we approached it on the side where tourists enter, and arrived just 15 minutes before the gates open at 11 am, when the queue was very small, only a dozen or so people.

This cathedral, like the one in Cordoba, was built over the top of a mosque which itself had plundered stone from a prior Christian church, whereas the cathedral was built from feshly-quarried stone, as the cathedral-issued blurb is at pains to point out. The initial impression as you enter is that it is huge. The third-largest Catholic cathedral in the world, after St Peter in Rome and St Paul in London, and the largest gothic cathedral in the world - 23,500 m2. The main mosque and minaret were built between 1184 and 1198. The mosque as it stood was consecrated as a cathedral in 1248. In 1434 construction began on the gothic cathedral.

One curious thing which only struck me today - most of the shrines and altars, including the main altar, a gigantic affair, are separated from the naves by a thick iron grill two to four metres high, or moire. They are very obtrusive, and although some had their gates open, the effect is to obscure what lies inside. I cannot fathom the thinking behind this. Is it that it was deemed too good for the unwashed masses to see?

Another thing that struck me was how much it must cost to maintain an edifice like this. It must be millions per annum. The presence of scaffolding and even a cherry-picker would seem to support this view. I feel that my €8 admission is at least partly serving a good cause.

By the time we finished the cathedral proper, including the Tresor and the chapter house, a particularly attractive oval chamber with high ceiling and paintings of notables around the walls, an hour and a half had elapsed. The high point, literally if not figuratively, was the Giraldo tower. This square structure made of brick was built by the moors as a minaret. Once the Catholic had control they transformed it into a bell tower, topping it with the iconic symbol of Seville, a weather vane. I think a replica of it was at ground level as we entered the gates at 11 am. One aspect of the tower design that we could both appreciate was the use of ramps rather than stairs. The ramps go around the outside of the building and they make the ~60 m ascent surprisingly easy. As we were going up I was trying to remember - where have we been up ramps before? It soon came to me - at the Hagia Sofia.

One of the sights from the tower perplexed us - in the distance there was a Large white shaft rising at an angle from the earth. As we did the circuit of the belfry we came upon explanatory panels that showed it was in fact a bridge.

We had menu del dia at a small place just off the Plaza del Triunfo - gazpacho, tortilla and ice cream - not bad. Then it was off to see the Archivo de Indias, housed in an attractive building adjacent to the cathedral. This was originally the trade hall and  share market used by merchants to conduct their Americas business. This was originally conducted in the cathedral precincts but the chapter house objected because it didn't serve a religious purpose. Seville had been granted exclusive rights to trade with the new world. Unfortunately, shortly after completion of the building the Rio Guadalquivir silted up so as to make access to the sea difficult. The whole trade subsequently moved to Cadiz. Many decades later, it was decided to centralize storage of all records and documents concerning the new world in this building.

The galleries of the upper floor were given over to rotating exhibits, the current one being about piracy in the new world, i.e. where the English, Dutch, French and others did their merry best to relieve the righteous Spanish of their spoils. Quite a few terms for piracy came up, which all sounded familiar in English, incl corsair, and contrabandido, but one that wasn't - filibustero, which we couldn't place. Googling shows that it also means adventurer, bandit , buccaneer , privateer. How it got its present meaning in the American congressional context would be an interesting story.

Lastly we walked over to the Plaza de Espagna, a semicircular structure with two towers connecting via raised colonnades to a central building. It was built for the 1929 Ibero-American Exhibition. As is our luck, there was lots of construction area going on in the plaza in front of the structure. All around the base of the semicircle were tiled themed historical images pertaining to various significant regions and cities.

We wanted to go out for dinner fairly local, but once we had set off it didn't take five minutes for us to get lost yet again. Eventually we found our way to the intended area where two likely establishments presented themselves. We went to one where an american couple was making enquiries, so we just followed them in. The menu had lots of tapas on offer and we chose a selection, only to be told a little later that the tapas portion size was not available, we guess because of the lack of custom in the establishment. We went for the full size dish, a racion. One paella and one meatballs. The former were very good and the latter so-so. We also had a bottle of Rioja red wine. The problem was that there has seldom been a wine list, so we were a little disappointed at the price of it. I put most of our problems down to our lack of language skills. To make us feel better we lobbed into another bar nearby (have I mentioned there are several on every street corner?) to get a glass of the Pedro Xinenez - a sticky, in lieu of dessert. After that the pains in feet and ankles did not bother us on the way home.

We are very impressed by how respectful drivers are of pedestrians, especially on zebra stripes. It's religion.