Seville’s Inspiring Art and Old-World Charm

The eight-centuries-old Torre del Oro, one of Seville's popular icons. (JG Photo/Vasco Ro)

Sometimes you need a few glossy shots on a magazine spread to find inspiration. Honestly, I couldn’t even recall the name of the magazine but the potent image stayed. Jutting spires, swaying palms and limestone facades convinced me to hit Spain’s fourth largest metropolis of Seville.

Numerous flights and coaches render Andalusia’s biggest city gateway to the region. With Spain’s high-speed AVE train buzzing at nearly 320 kilometers an hour,  gone long are those images of Andalusia as the country’s backwater. 

To my surprise despite their economic woes, I found Sevillanos quite upbeat, particularly in the art department. “Art is everything in Andalusia—you see art, you create it and you breath it,” stated my friend Eduardo Troncoso, an art
consultant for the municipal.

The finest example of what he just said was probably Metropol Parasol — the largest wooden structure that dwarfed anything that stood in Plaza Encarnacion since 2011. No buildings were knocked down — God forbids — in the making but the humongous man-made beehive created a stir.

Locals call it las Setas—the Mushroom. The timber fungus seemed at first ill-fitting to go with Seville’s architecture rich in her Moor and azulejo (ceramic tilework) tradition. But architect Juergen Mayer’s floating vault design worked. With soft and flowing textures, the Setas became the latest landmark in the old town.

Legends and wealth

One of the city gates used to bear the inscription “Hercules founded me, Caesar built walls and towers in me.” So I discovered in Seville sometimes it’s hard to separate facts and traditions. Locals don’t think twice in telling you their town was founded by Hercules. Legend has it the Greek hero came to the bank of the Quadalquivir river to kill his uncle, Tyfon. 

Happily you can still find a piece of 3,000-year old Seville. With the arrivals of the Romans, the Greco-Phoenician village was baptized as Hispalis, which later produced two emperors to Rome.

I wanted to see the town’s twin Roman columns so I was headed for Alameda de Hercules. This public square assembles a giant sandbox with countless bars, tavernas and art galleries. The carefree Bohemian air makes this district popular.

“It’s my favorite place in Seville,”  Eduardo said after we’d ordered a quick tapas. “It’s close enough to the Old Town but you can park your car here, impossible in Santa Cruz,” he shrugged in disbelief.

Santa Cruz is the so-called happening district, with more hole-in-a-wall bars per capita than anywhere else in Seville. The best time to feel Santa Cruz is during the Easter celebration, during which impossibly narrow alleyways teem with white-clad cone-hooded Catholic devotees. Happily, nothing stops you from visiting Santa Cruz anytime of the year. 

“Probably not in the peak of summer,” said Eduardo. With temperature hovering between 35° to 40° Celsius, Seville tops the country’s hottest cities list. No wonder escaping the yearly heat waves had become a pastime, I thought.

“To cool down you must take a siesta in the afternoon, that’s why our streets look so empty after lunch. Or you can go to the riverbank and you feel the breeze,” he added referring to the Guadalquivir.

The former Roman town of Hispalis owes it so much to this magnificent river. Without which, Seville would have been a desolate land-locked town. Or worse, it wouldn’t have been able to funnel the fortune from Spain’s overseas colonies. 

The swanky banks now sport drink kiosks, wooden platform esplanade and cycling tracks that run for 50 kilometers. The Left bank is where Seville’s nearly one million residents go for their tapas haunts in Triana. On your right however, the view changes to something more traditional in the form of city gates and towers. 

The most iconic of those is Torre del Oro. The hulking 36-meter-high tower served as a watchtower in 1221. But the Almohad emirs had it for barely 30 years. In 1248, king Ferdinand III brought the city gates down, sealing Seville’s destiny of rich and splendor.

The city’s thoroughfare is Avenida de Colon — somewhat a tribute to Colombus who set sail through Seville’s docks and set motion to Europe’s wealth and enlightenment. In the 16th century, Seville became Europe’s most important city, the gateway to the Americas, the only trading port between the old and new worlds spanning from Manila to Managua.

Chill out

Tramping the impossibly narrow alleyways of Santa Cruz,  I weaved my way back toward those inviting spires. Scooters dodged, horse-drawn wagons ducked, I had to affront the imposing Santa Maria de la Sede cathedral. But I went further down.

I was set to down probably what’s the best aperitif place in town. EME Catedral is a multi-starred hotel venue jealously guarded by locals, frequented by overseas visitors, famous for its vista.

A discreet elevator silently whizzed up through the inner courtyard, taking me to the celebrated rooftop bar. Everything suddenly turned into a movie set. 

Down below, I could hear a silent humming from Avenida Alemanes,  the street that once housed German  merchants in opulent Seville. And before my eyes, close enough for me to see the details was Seville’s two landmarks: the cathedral and Giralda bell tower.

It’s hard not to be awed but I couldn’t get enough of the Santa Sede cathedral. Spain’s largest church is adorned in proper Gothic style and highlighted by sky-reaching arrows of her spires. Her bulky figure sits at number three of the world’s largest churches. Simply put, its beauty has to be seen to be believed.

Cocktail in hand, I shifted to the other side of the rooftop bar. Here the view just got better. Standing 100-meter high, the Catholic bell tower of Giralda was the remodel of once the world’s greatest minaret that inspired medieval Islamic cities across the Gibraltar strait. To say it beautiful is like calling the Egyptian
pyramids interesting.

Swamped by stirring and impassioning beauty, I could only think of what Andalusia’s poet Federico Lorca once proclaimed. “Seville, a constellation of arrows, wounds. Low her arch, bright her lights. Seville is a lantern and firefly.”