When arriving in Seville last night, we went to dinner at an excellent tapas restaurant. This morning we were on our own. We decided to walk to the Metropol Parasol, also known as the ‘mushrooms of Seville’ (‘Las Setas de Sevilla‘). This building, which opened in 2011, was designed by the German architect Jürgen Mayer, who won a design competition to revitalise the square. It is the largest wooden construction in the world (150 x 70 meters and 26 meters in height). Mayer won the competition partly thanks to the way he integrated the remains of a Roman colony into his building. People originally wanted to build a parking lot here, but that idea was abandoned when these Roman remains were discovered.

Views from the top of the mushrooms

Views from the streets along our walk

We ate lunch in the same place that we had tapas the night before. Just an excellent restaurant. We then joined our guide for the tour of the Alcazar. The Royal Alcázars of Seville (Spanish: Reales Alcázares de Sevilla), historically known as al-Qasr al-Muriq (Arabic: القصر المُورِق, The Verdant Palace) and commonly known as the Alcázar of Seville. It was built for the Christian king Peter of Castile on the site of the Moorish fortress that was destroyed after the Christian conquest of Seville in 1248. Even though the palace was for a king, it was built by moors and obviously the architecture was influenced by that. The design is geometric with no depiction of humans or animals. There is even embedded Arabic giving Glory to Allah. Very interesting when you think that it was being built for a Christian king.

After a walk through the Jewish quarter, we visited the cathedral of Seville, one of the biggest Cathedrals in Europe. The Cathedral of Saint Mary of the See(Spanish: Catedral de Santa María de la Sede), better known as Seville Cathedral, was registered in 1987 by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, along with the adjoining Alcázar palace complex and the General Archive of the Indies. It is the fourth-largest church in the world (its size remains a matter of debate) as well as the largest Gothic church. After its completion in the early 16th century, Seville Cathedral supplanted Hagia Sophia as the largest cathedral in the world, a title the Byzantine church had held for a thousand years. The Gothic section alone has a length of 126 m (413 ft), a width of 76 m (249 ft), and its maximum height in the center of the transept is 42 m (138 ft). The total height of the Giralda tower from the ground to the weather vane is 104.5 m (342 ft 10 in).

Pictures from the Jewish quarter.

Pictures of the Cathedral.