LegendThe hundred maidens
The Maidens' court is named for the hundred virgins that the Christian kings of the north had to send each year to the Muslim rulers of Córdoba.
Source: A medieval Christian legend with no support in the Arabic sources
The story
Alcázar is Arabic: al-qasr, the castle. Muslim rulers held Seville from 712 to 1248 and built on this spot for three hundred years. Almost nothing of theirs is what you will remember. What you will remember was built after the Christian conquest.
In 1364 King Pedro I of Castile began a new palace here. His friend the Muslim king of Granada, who was building the Alhambra at that moment, sent him craftsmen. Others came from Toledo. The style they made, Islamic in its art and Christian in its patron, is called Mudéjar. In China this is the last years of the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368).
Close by, with a page of its own: Seville Cathedral, Mezquita, Córdoba, Royal Palace, Madrid.
What is here
The general ticket covers the ground-floor palaces and the gardens. The upper rooms are a small extra ticket for a set time, with few places.
| Part | Ticket |
|---|---|
| The gate and the first courts | General ticket |
| Pedro's palace: the Maidens' court, the ambassadors' hall, the Dolls' court | General ticket |
| The office for America | General ticket |
| The Gothic palace and the tank | General ticket |
| The gardens | General ticket |
| The upper royal rooms | Extra ticket, timed |
If you have one minute
In the Courtyard of the Maidens
A long pool runs down the middle, with sunken beds of orange trees on each side, a metre below the paths. Round it runs an arcade of lobed arches on thin marble columns.
Go close to a wall. The lower part is tile cut into stars and knots. Above it the plaster is carved like lace, and running through the lace is writing. It is Arabic. Some bands say "Glory to our lord the Sultan Don Pedro". Others repeat the motto of the kings of Granada: there is no victor but God.
ولا غالب إلا الله
There is no victor but God.
The motto of the Nasrid kings of Granada, carved again and again on the walls of this Christian king's palace, 1364–1366
Now look up at the second floor. It is plainer, with round arches. It was added in the 1500s, and it is where the king stays today.
The garden in this court is new to us. For four hundred years it lay under a marble floor. Archaeologists found it in 2002 and it was opened up again.
Things people often get wrong
"It is a Moorish palace." The outer walls and one small court are Muslim work. The famous part was built by Christian kings, in a Muslim style they admired.
"It is the same as the Alhambra." The two were built in the same years by some of the same hands. The Alhambra, in Granada, was a Muslim king's. This was a Christian king's.
"You can buy a ticket at the gate." In spring and autumn the day's tickets are usually sold out before you arrive. Tickets carry your name, and your passport is checked at the door.
People who stood here
- Abd al-Rahman III (emir, later caliph, of Córdoba, reigned 912–961)Seville had rebelled. In 913, the second year of his reign, he pulled down part of its walls and built a fort for his governor against the river. The oldest stretch of wall, by the gate, is his.
- al-Mu'tamid (poet and king of Seville, 1040–1095)The last and most gifted of the Arab kings of Seville held court here among poets. He was overthrown in 1091 by the Berber army he had himself invited from Africa, and died a prisoner in Morocco, still writing verse.
- Pedro I of Castile (king, 1334–1369; called the Cruel by his enemies and the Just by his friends)He built the palace in two years and lived in it with María de Padilla, whom he loved and could not openly marry. He was stabbed to death by his half-brother at the age of thirty-four.
- Ibn Khaldun (historian from Tunis, 1332–1406; author of the Muqaddimah)He came here in 1364 as the ambassador of the king of Granada, with gifts. Pedro liked him and offered to give him back his ancestors' lands near Seville if he would stay. He declined.
- Amerigo Vespucci (Italian navigator, 1454–1512; America is named after him)From 1503 every ship to the New World was licensed, and every map kept, in an office inside this palace. In 1508 he became its first chief pilot, the man who examined all the others.
- Ferdinand Magellan (Portuguese navigator, about 1480–1521)He prepared his voyage round the world in the same office in 1518 and 1519. Of his five ships, one came back to Seville three years later, with eighteen men.
- Charles V (Holy Roman Emperor and king of Spain, 1500–1558)He married his cousin Isabella of Portugal in the domed hall here on 11 March 1526. They had not met before that week. It became a happy marriage.
- The makers of Game of Thrones (American television series)In the fifth season, shown in 2015, the palace is the Water Gardens of Dorne. The prince receives his guests in the domed hall, and the vaulted tank under the garden and the pond with the bronze god both appear.
Go deeper: eight stops, from the lion on the gate to the pond in the garden
All eight stops are on the general ticket. The rooms upstairs where the king stays need a second ticket.
1. The lion on the gate
The red wall with square towers is the oldest thing here, from the 900s to the 1100s. Over the gate a lion in tiles holds a cross. It was put up in 1894.
2. Pedro's front
Across the second court is the front of Pedro's palace. Under the deep wooden eaves a band of blue and white tiles carries an Arabic text in square letters. Round it, in Gothic letters, a Spanish text gives the date: 1364. Two languages, one king.
3. The hall of the ambassadors
The throne room is a cube with a dome. The dome is of cedar, carved into stars and gilded, and was made in 1427. People call it the half orange. Under it the king sat, and in 1526 an emperor was married.
4. The dolls
The smallest court was the family's own. It is called the Court of the Dolls. Search the foot of the arches: on one of them a few tiny faces, the size of a thumbnail, are carved there. Finding one is said to bring luck.
5. The room of the navigators
In the wing that held the office for America hangs a painting of about 1535. The Virgin spreads her cloak over ships and over kneeling men: sailors, merchants, and behind them, in shadow, the people of the lands they had reached. It is one of the first pictures made in Europe about the voyages.
6. The Gothic palace and the tank under it
A century before Pedro, another king built in the northern way: pointed vaults, big windows. The long hall is hung with tapestries of the emperor's attack on Tunis in 1535. The map in the first one has south at the top.
Go down the steps outside. Under the garden court is a long vaulted tank of still water. It caught the rain. It is named the baths of María de Padilla.
The same shot: the picture of the vaults doubled in the water is taken from the railing at the entrance, with the camera held low and level.
7. The pond and the wall of rock
The first garden has a raised pond with a bronze Mercury. Behind it an old defensive wall was turned, about 1612, into a long gallery faced with rough stone to look like a cave. Climb it and walk along the top.
Near the pond a fountain plays a tune each hour. Water pushes air through pipes. It is an organ from the 1600s, and one of very few left in Europe that still work.
8. The gardens
Beyond are seven hectares of hedges, palms, orange trees, tiled benches and peacocks. Each garden was added by a different century, from Muslim orchards to an English park of 1910. The oranges are bitter. They are the kind used for marmalade.
In the small pavilion in the middle, built for the emperor in 1543, look at the tiles: every one is different.