Historical
Sights and Landmarks of Seville, Spain. 1252-1929
Introduction
The decision of King Pedro I of
Castille, almost a century after the Castilian conquest of Seville, to build
the Mudejar Palace, introduces a stylistic variant, the múdejar of Almohad origin,
in the architecture of the city. Mudejar influenced the Gothic, Renaissance and
Baroque architectures of Seville and consolidated its influence in the
regionalist architecture of the early 20th century. However, in Seville, there
are rigorously Gothic architectural landmarks, such as the Cathedral,
Renaissance ones, such as the “Archivo de Indias” (old chamber of commerce) and
fully Baroque like San Telmo Palace.
In this informative article on the historical landmarks
of my city, Seville, I have gathered and expanded a set of small articles I
have published on social networks over the last five years.
The format is always the same, a
historical commentary together with a brief architectural analysis. I accompany
each of them with a link that I consider of interest to host the information on
each building.
The period considered goes from the year
1254 with the construction of Las
Atarazanas (The Shipyards) until 1929 in which the Plaza de España is
finished. All the buildings are in the historical centre of the city or close
to it.
Seville had two periods of economic and
therefore architectural splendour, the first one after the conquest of the city
by the Kingdom of Castille and the second after the discovery of America, both
periods linked to the Port of the city in the Guadalquivir River. The historical
centre of Seville has 400 hectares, close to the 500 hectares of Venice and
with it the largest city in Europe during the Middle Ages and part of the
Renaissance. In the old town of Seville we can find valuable examples of
Gothic, Mudejar, Renaissance and Baroque architecture.
I have only included the large scale
buildings, eleven in total:
o Atarazanas (The Shipyards)
o Gothic and Mudejar Palaces of the
Alcázar
o Cathedral
o Giralda
o Hospital de las cinco Llagas (Hospital
of the Five Wounds)
o Archivo de Indias (Historic chamber of
commerce)
o Museum of Fine Arts
o Palace of San Telmo,
o Royal Tobacco Factory
o Plaza de España.
The Shipyards (1252)
The Atarazanas
(The Shipyards) were, together with the Port, the industrial and commercial
engine of Seville from the 13th century until the Discovery of America at the
end of the 15th century. They were the main shipyards in Castille and later in
Spain. They were built by Alfonso X of Castile from 1252.
The activity of the Shipyards was an
economic boost for the city that allowed, for example, the construction of the
Cathedral.
Its 17 consecutive vaults with arcades,
of 100 meters long and 11 meters wide, occupied an area of 19,000 square
meters. The original height was 11 meters and they were built at the level of
the River so that the ships could easily slid to the water.
It
is built with a strong brickwork with semicircular arch vaults over pointed
arches. This arrangement allows light to enter under the vaults and over the
pointed arches. The mixture of circular and ogival arches recalls the
constructive solution of the Church of Santa Ana in Triana, built at the same
time by Alfonso X of Castille.
Fernando of Aragón's decision to promote
the Barcelona shipyards marks the beginning of a process of destruction and
changes of use. In 1534, the height of the building was raised by means of a
5-metre fill. The Hospital de la Caridad
occupied 5 naves of the original building. It became successively The Trading
House and Artillery Factory. In this process, 10 of the 17 original arcades
were destroyed, leaving 7 arcades embedded between the Hospital de la Caridad and the stopper building of the old
Artillery Factory.
Fortunately, the recently approved
refurbishment project, paralyses the process of destruction of the building but
also transforms it by adding new elements.
Gothic Palace, Alcázar de Sevilla. (1254)
Original Construction: 1254, Alfonso X de Castilla
Reform
after the Lisbon Earthquake: 1758, Arch: Van der Borcht
The Gothic Palace of the Alcazar of
Seville was built by Alfonso X of Castille, on the grounds of the former
Almohad Alcazar. It was a construction of two parallel bays and two
perpendiculars that formed a rectangular building. From the original Gothic
construction we have the Hall of the Vaults in the first bay, the Chapel in the
perpendicular bay adjacent to the future Mudéjar Palace and the baths of Doña María in the basement.
The work carried out by Van der Borcht,
after the Lisbon earthquake, adds the Salon of Tapestries in the second bay,
built with vaulted vaults and the entrance portico in a marked Baroque style.
The result of his action in the Palace and the Courtyard of the Cruise is
somewhat confusing, the visitor seems to be in the most modern part of the
Alcazar being, in part, the oldest. If the access to the Baths of Doña María
were transferred to the interior of the palace, the building would be undertood
better.
Mudejar Palace. Alcázar of Seville. (1350)
The decision of Pedro I of Burgundy,
King of Castille, to contract islamic masons (Alarifes) from Seville and Granada to build his palace in the
Alcazar of Seville (The Mudejar Palace), had a decisive influence on the
architecture of the Renaissance and Baroque Sevillian. With this decision the
King moves away from the Gothic style used by other European kings.
King Don Pedro built the ground floor of
the Palace in a delicate Almohad style, for which his friend and ally the King
of Granada sent him his alarifes. The
cause of this surprising decision may be in the cultured and refined character
of Don Pedro. The broken entrance, the use of ceramics and plasterwork, the
location of the divan in the Patio de Las Doncellas, etc. are
characteristics that had to be revolutionary for a palace of a Christian king.
The King of Granada, Mohamed VI, upon seeing
the result obtained by his ally decided to build the Alhambra surpassing the
model of the Sevillian Mudejar Palace, which is therefore a precedent built by
a Christian king of the magnificent Andalusi palace.
The Múdejar has influenced the Sevillian
architecture of the Renaissance, Baroque and Regionalism. Its ornamental
character, the use of ceramics and plasterwork became a standard of Sevillian
architecture. A good example are Houses-Palaces built by the Sevillian aristocrats
during the Renaissance (the Great Houses to which I refer are: Casa de Pilatos, Palacio de las Dueñas,
Palacio de los Marqueses de la Algaba and Casa de los Pinelos).
The successive kings of Castille
maintained the initial style in the construction of the upper floor and in various
reforms that end in the time of Emperor Charles V. Of these rooms, the
Ambassadors Hall with its splendid coffered dome and the Doll´s Patio stand
out.
Construction period:
1350-1540. King Don Pedro-Emperador Carlos V.
The Cathedral 1400
The cathedral what built by the citizens of Seville. Work began
by decision of the Chapter and was financed by the guilds and families of
merchants who had prospered in the economic boost due to the Port and the Shipyards.
Gautier said of the Cathedral that it was like a "Hollow
Mountain"; according to the French writer, in the cathedral of Seville one
could navigate comfortably between its seven naves and its large pillars like
towers.
It is indeed a very large cathedral of 118 x 78 meters in floor
plan and 40 meters high. It is the largest Gothic cathedral ever built. And it
is documented that this was the intention of the promoters of the Cathedral: "Let's make a church so beautiful and
so grandiose that those who see it carved consider us crazy" and
according to the capitular act of that day the new work should be "such and so good, that there is no other its
equal". The Cathedral hosts a monumental space that we can enjoy strolling
between its pillars and naves. It is a space that has the verticality of the
Gothic and that extends horizontally as in a Mosque.
Its seven naves and its floor plan mean that there is no
hierarchy of the main nave like other cathedrals. When we enter we do
not have as reference point the major axis and the altar, for that reason we
can walk through the interior of the Cathedral without clear points of
reference. It is therefore a fairly homogeneous space that we cannot capture
immediately. The set of Renaissance buildings surrounding the Cathedral
contributes to this, because from the outside it is difficult to understand the
shape of the Cathedral.
The construction of the Cathedral of Seville began in the 1400s
under the direction of Charles Galter, he designs it in rigorous Gothic with
quadripartite vaults in the five central naves and sixpartite on the two sides.
The crossing vault and the old spire had numerous problems in the events of
earthquakes until it was replaced by a star vault in the sixteenth century, and
rebuilt with the same shape was the nineteenth century.
During the 16th century several rooms and chapels were added to
the Cathedral, with the intervention of architects Hernan Ruiz II, Diego de
Riaño, Gil de Hontañón and Martín de Gainza. The most important are: The Main
Sacristy, the Royal Chapel and the Chapterhouse, as well as the Church of the
Tabernacle in the seventeenth century. In these halls and chapels the
Renaissance style is predominant with domes and vaults of great value. The dome
on pendentives and toroids of the Sacristy Major, the oval dome of the Chapter
House and the vaulted vaults of the Church of the Tabernacle have been object
of numerous studies and structural analyses.
Also in the 16th century, Hernán Ruiz II reformed the old
Almohad minaret and converted it into La Giralda, as we shall see in the
following section.
In it lie the Kings of Castile Ferdinand III, Alfonso X the Wise
and Peter I. The Cathedral also houses the tomb of Christopher Columbus.
The Giralda Tower (1184 and 1566)
The Giralda is a beautiful and impressive
tower that has become a symbol of Seville. It is a mixture of the Almohad tower
(bottom) and the Renaissance bell tower (top), the result is homogeneous, its
components are not distinguishable.
We can say that it is a perfect
symbiosis of the powerful tower of Ben Basso and the magnificent design of
Hernán Ruiz. The Almohad minaret dates from 1184 and the Renaissance solution
dates from 1566. The success of the solution made the Giralda a model for the
Renaissance towers in Andalusia.
Technically it has a structure of double
masonry walls with a square floor of 13 metres on each side, which Hernán Ruiz
takes advantage of by supporting the top of the Almohad tower with the “Body of
Bells” on the external wall and supporting
the bodies of the “Clock” and “Carambolas” on the internal tube.
Hernan Ruiz raised the tower’s height
from the original 75 meters to the current 92 meters.
The material chosen for its construction
is the dry pressed bricks of the Guadalquivir River, which has always been used
in Seville. The base of the tower is reinforced with limestone.
The foundation based on an extensive
improvement of the pre-existing terrain allows Hernán Ruiz to add 3,000 tons of
weight to the 14,000 tons of the Ben Basso tower. The Giralda is named after the Giraldillo, a massive 4m height bronze sculpture which is also a weather vane, located on the top of the tower.
The Tower has withstood all the
earthquakes that have occurred in Seville since its construction with solvency.
In this blog I have four published analyses on the Giralda. The first one describes
the structure and its geometry, the second is a structural analysis of its own
weight and the third and fourth are structural analyses against wind and
earthquake. The conclusion of the analyses is that the foundation makes the
Tower possible. The brickwork resists perfectly, and the centre of gravity of
the double-wall structure moves very little with wind and earthquake, thanks to
the weight of the Tower and its perimeter distribution. But it was necessary to
improve the terrain to resist the pressure that the tower transmits to the
terrain.
The Hospital de Las Cinco Llagas (1535)
The Five Wounds Hospital, (Hospital
de las Cinco Llagas) closes the monumental complex of Seville to the north,
is located outside the historic walls, in what is the neighbourhood of La
Macarena. This Monument marks the beginning of the fertile Renaissance period
of Sevillian architecture, to which I have already referred, with the
Houses-Palaces, the Salas de la Catedral and The Giralda. Also of interest is
the Monastery of San Isidoro del Campo, near the archaeological site of the
Roman city of Italica.
It was built by Martín de Gainza following the ideals of hygiene
and healthiness of the Renaissance Hospital. Four large cloistered courtyards
of 40 metres on each side illuminate and ventilate the large cross room for the
sick, a small altar was placed in the centre of the cross.
It is a large building, rectangular 174 by 161 meters, organized
around 8 courtyards, 4 cloisters with semicircular arches and four smaller
courtyards. The façades are arranged in a Tuscan order on the ground floor that
supports the upper Corinthian order.
The quasi-baroque façade was designed by Miguel de Zumárraga; if
we cross it we find the Church of the Hospital designed by Hernán Ruiz II. This
is the first Sevillian example of a single nave church. The church is isolated
and exempt in the entrance courtyard, and its vaulted domes and its magnificent
Ionic interior order stand out.
El Archivo de Indias. The Old Trading House. (1584)
The Archivo de Indias, The
old Trading House, is the most sober
and classic building built during the Renaissance in Seville. Ceramics are not
present in its design accompanying the brick seen, neither the plasterwork in
the Patio, even does not have a Cover in facade. However, it is a magnificent
example of Renaissance architecture.
The whole building is organized with one module or order. The
rhythm of pilasters that modulates the façade is not arbitrary, it is closely
related to the architectural organization of the building. The module or order
that we can see in the arches of the courtyard, the vaults and galleries,
coincides with the distance between pilasters of the façade.
The central courtyard of five modules or orders is reflected in
the five central modules of the facades. The courtyard gallery occupies a
module on both sides of the five central modules. The archive rooms occupy the
two orders at the ends of the façade.
When the pilasters are duplicated, they show us the thickness of
the interior walls or arches, managing not to lose the rhythm of the module.
Every element of the building is related to the others by means
of this modulation.
This building was the central element of my PhD Thesis on the
influence of classical orders on the structural organisation of Renaissance
civil buildings. One of the conclussions of the Thesis is that the Orders were
Ornament and Foundation of the architectural project and that their influence
came from the structural origin of the classical orders. In the Archives the
ideal of Leon Battista Alberti is fulfilled that all the elements were related
to each other and to the building as a whole; the orders are at the centre of
this relationship.
The vaults of the upper floor are built with carved limestone,
as well as well designed have an excellent structural performance for more than
8 meters of light. These vaults follow the canon established by the Andalusian
architect Alonso de Vandelvira, in his treatise on architecture. The book by
José Carlos Palacios, Traces and Cuts of Stonework in the Andalusian
Renaissance, describes this type of vault in an excellent way.
Museum
of Fine Arts (1602)
The Museo
de Bellas Artes de Sevilla is a transitional building between Renaissance
and Baroque in Seville. It was designed by Juan de Oviedo in 1602 for the
Convent of La Merced. Reformed in 1722 by Juan de Figueroa, the Sevillian
Baroque architect. In 1835 the building was used as the Fine Arts Museum and
has the second art gallery in Spain, after the Prado Museum in Madrid.
It is articulated around three large
courtyards and has fourteen rooms. The room dedicated to Murillo, which is the
former chapel of the convent, stands out for its content. The rooms dedicated
to Zurbarán and Valdés Leal complete the exhibition of the best Spanish Baroque
religious painting.
San
Telmo Palace (1722)
The San Telmo Palace, with its
magnificent façade, is the great Sevillian Baroque building. It dates from 1722
and is located outside the walls and at the southern end of the monumental
complex of Seville. It was the Palace of the Dukes of Montpensier in the 19th
century, when Seville was the "Little Court" due to the aspirations
to the throne of Duke Antonio de Orleans. The Duke began a new stage of
splendour in the city, with his palace and gardens that astonished everyone.
The building was built by the University
of the Merchant Navy. In 1722, the Baroque architect from Seville, Leonardo de
Figueroa, was in charge of the works that lasted until 1796, being the
architect Lucas Cintora who finished the building.
From 1849 to 1897 it was the official
residence of the Duke of Montpensier. The Montpensier family wanted to make
Seville a capital parallel to Madrid, and they succeeded. Hence the name of the
Montpensier Court. For this they needed, among other things, a large residence.
They reconverted the University into a
Palace and built large gardens, designed by the French engineer André de
Lecolant, which were the germ of the current Maria Luisa Park. In 1897 the Orleans family donated the building
to the Archbishopric and the gardens to the city.
The Archbishopric turned it into a
Seminary and in 1992 it became the seat of the Presidency of the Junta de
Andalucía.
Leonardo de Figueroa designed a
rectangular building, with a central entrance courtyard and chapel at the back,
with two large side courtyards.
The façade is organised in two floors
with powerful cornices arranged by pilasters. It is built with exposed brick
and its almagra and albero colours
define the Baroque façades in Seville. The main façade, of an exuberant Baroque
style, consists of three superimposed bodies: Entrance, Balcony and the Arch of
San Telmo. The chapel is Baroque with a barrel vault and an elaborate
altarpiece.
Façade, entrance courtyard and chapel
are the only elements that have survived the transformations of the twentieth
century.
Leonardo de Figueroa is the central
figure of Baroque architecture in Seville. The churches of La Caridad, El Salvador, San Luis de los
Franceses, Iglesia de la Magdalena and Los Venerables are splendid examples
of Sevillian Baroque.
The Royal Tobacco Factory . (1730)
The Royal Tobacco Factor together with the Atarazanas and the Archivo de
Indias are the three great historical buildings of commercial and
industrial use in Seville. Their construction was ordered in 1728 by King
Philip V and is the great contribution of the Bourbons to Sevillian
architecture.
It occupies a very large rectangular block,
185 by 147 metres. It was designed by the Dutch engineer Sebastián Van der
Borcht, author of the reform of the Gothic Palace of the Alcazar after the Lisbon
earthquake.
Van der Borcht designed the building with
neoclassical rigor, the facades are ordered with pilasters that occupy the two
floors of the building. Over the austere and classic background built in
limestone, its Baroque sculptured surround main doors, stand out.
Constructively it is very interesting its foundation on inverted arches that
solves the problem of the underground Tagarete stream.
The Patios of the Fountain and the Clock,
surrounded by Renaissance-inspired arches, arrange the whole inside. The 1954
reform of Balbontín and Toro Buiza made the building lose its industrial
character.
Being the most important industrial building
built in Spain in the 18th century, its size is close to that of El Escorial.
In 1954 it became the headquarters of the University of Seville.
Plaza de España 1929.
The time elapsed between the
construction of the Royal Tobacco Factory and Plaza de España tells us how
Seville entered a period of decadence, with an absolute lack of attention and
investment on the part of the Government of Spain, which from Philip V, directs
its attention to the North. It is evident that Seville's geographical location
makes it lose interest in the face of the strong industrial development of
European countries. Around the Ibero-American Exhibition in 1929, a very
regionalist architectural renaissance arose in the city, of which the Plaza de
España building is the main exponent.
The Plaza de España is one of the three
great buildings outside the walls of Seville. The other two are the Hospital de
las Cinco Llagas from the 16th century and the Real Fábrica de Tabacos from the
18th century.
It was built by Aníbal González for the
Ibero-American Exhibition at the beginning of the 20th century. Its size is
impressive.
It is a classicist-inspired building
with a semi-circular floor plan and a diameter of 170 metres. Aníbal González
said that it had been based on the Spanish Renaissance and on some villas of
Palladio for the layout in plant. The buildings that surround the square are
structured in a central building, wings with intermediate buildings that
compensate an excessive length and towers at the ends. This floor plan responds
very closely to the formal scheme of the type of Palladian villa with curved
wings, such as the villa Bader or villa Trissino in Meledo, shown by the
Italian architect Andrea Palladio in his Four Books on Architecture, a treatise
that Aníbal González knew.
In spite of its classicist design the
Cinema has chosen it many times to recreate exotic environments or cities like
Jerusalem or Damascus. Perhaps it is the light of Seville, the predominant
colour of the brick kneaded with mud from the River or the colour of the sky.
The decorative use of ceramics also helps to imagine oriental environments.
Or simply it is about its scenographic
character, very turned towards the outside and easy to use by the industry of
the Cinema.
The building was originally designed to
house the University, however it has always had various administrative uses of
a military nature.
Aníbal González built numerous
regionalist and modernist houses, but it seems to me that it is the Hotel
Alfonso XIII of José Espiau, of an excellent Mudejar style, the other exponent
of the best architecture of this period in Seville.
Miguel Angel Cobreros Vime. Doctor Arquitecto.
References: Monumentos de Sevilla. cobrerosvime.blogspot.com
