The Royal Palace of Seville, the oldest in Europe.

The place where the monarchy lived and governed. Although from the outside it looks nothing like a European royal palace, its walls create a kind of ‘forbidden city’, in a way that means there’s no guessing what’s inside.

And this is something intrinsic to Islamic architectural tradition, since it was precisely with the Umayyad dynasty, in the 10^th century that the Alcazar began to be built. Its use as a royal residence until our time gives it the honour of being the oldest royal palace in use in the world.

‘Royal Alcázars’

But more than this, what makes the Alcazar of Seville unique is there are several different palaces within the same site. So, we have the courtyard of the ancient Almohade palace, the mudejar palace, the gothic palace, and recently the discovery of a new one… the palace of the king Al-Mutamid.

All of them were built by different monarchs or dynasties, which makes the collection a display of art, history and different cultures. Not counting the unpreserved remains of the Umayyad palace.

The most famous of these is, without doubt, the Mudejar Palace, named like this for being an entirely Arabic style palace built by Christians. It’s the prettiest of the group, with its big geometric decoration, its artisanal ceilings, its labyrinthine architecture and its interior courtyards. The famous Courtyard of the Maidens, or the great Ambassador’s Hall deserve a special place and are, without doubt, works of art worth seeing.

A little bit of history

But we shouldn’t only stay with the attractiveness of the Alcazar, because behind its walls hides a rich history, in these rooms lived and ruled the monarchs of Castile. This leads us to ask why there is a royal palace in a city like Seville, which isn’t the capital but a city in the south of Spain.

The answer is that until the 16^th century the monarchs didn’t have a fixed capital. The Christian sovereigns established themselves in the cities which seemed the most suitable to the moment to carry out their rule. But, of course, they had to be important cities on the map, or at least with a certain level of development to be able to welcome the rulers and their whole court. Seville, although today is almost overlooked, was one of the biggest and richest cities and of great significance since it had been named as a roman colony. It was one of the most important of the Taifa kingdom, later it was the capital of the Almoravid and Almohad Empire and after the Christian reconquest many monarchs decided to live here.  Practically all of them made modifications to the Alcazar, for example the Catholic Kings lifted the upper floor of the Mudejar Palace, calling it the ‘high palace’. Notwithstanding, when the capital was established in Madrid, (until then a town of very little importance), many royals continued visiting Seville, staying in the Alcazar and altering it to their taste, like Isabel II, who ordered that the Courtyard of the Dolls be roofed, taking away its nature as an interior patio.

Gardens

Finally, no less impressive are the gardens, that with 60 000 m2 of surface area, almost triple the size of the palace grounds. In them, there are majestic ponds, bowers, works of mannerist art like the Gallery of the Grotesques, peacocks, even a labyrinth. Maybe because of this they were chosen as the gardens of Dorne in the series Game of Thrones.

For wondering at the Alcazar with its architecture and history there is this specially designed tour:

Images source: 38 – 47 (section 2)