Four days in Seville: a bell tower that was built as a minaret

Mushrooms and flamenco on the first evening, the Alcázar and the Giralda on the second day, the 1929 fairground and the Guadalquivir on the third, and two courtyard palaces before the train.

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Length
4 days, 3 nights
Where you stay
Seville
Places
10 across 4 days
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Seville was the Almohad capital of al-Andalus, then the only Spanish port licensed to trade with the Americas, and the money from both is still standing. The mosque became the largest Gothic cathedral anywhere, its minaret became the bell tower, and the palace the caliphs started is still the royal family's residence when they are in town.

It is also a compact city. The historic centre is about two kilometres across, almost none of it takes cars, and the four things everybody comes for sit within a few hundred metres of each other. That leaves a lot of a four day trip for the parts nobody books: the orange trees, the tiled bars, the walk along the river at dusk.

The heat is the one real constraint. From June to September the hours around noon are not usable, and the city adapts by starting early, disappearing between two and six, and coming back out at nine. Three nights, one hotel, and days built around that rhythm rather than against it.

Highlights

  • The Alcázar's Mudéjar palace at opening, before the courtyards fill
  • The ramp up the Giralda, built for a man on horseback rather than for stairs
  • Sunset from the walkway on top of the wooden parasols, with the whole old town underneath
  • Standing on the tiled benches of the 1929 fairground looking for your own province

Where to stay

Seville, three nights

One base throughout. The cathedral, the Alcázar, the wooden parasols, the 1929 fairground and the river are inside a circle you can walk across in twenty-five minutes, and the only reason to take transport is the airport.

The city is flat, shaded in the right places, and built for walking after dark. Whatever the plan for a day, expect the last part of it to happen outdoors at nine at night.

Day by day

Day 1 in Seville

The parasols at sunset, tapas and flamenco

An arrival evening, which in Seville is the good half of the day anyway. Start on the roof of the wooden canopy ten minutes north of the cathedral, where a raised walkway loops out over the old town with the bell tower and the cathedral roofs in the middle distance.

Come down into the streets underneath for the first tapas, then a small flamenco room later. Both belong to the evening here, and both are better at ten than at seven.

  1. 19:00

    Metropol Parasol

    Historic

    A lattice of timber the size of a city block, finished in 2011 and known to everybody as las setas, the mushrooms. A lift takes you to the walkway on top, which winds around above the roofs of the old town. Go for the last hour of daylight; the ticket includes a drink at the bar up there, which is not a bad deal.

  2. 20:30

    El Rinconcillo

    Eat

    Founded in 1670 and generally reckoned the oldest tavern in the city: hams on the ceiling, no menu on the table, and your bill chalked on the wooden counter in front of you as you order. Have the espinacas con garbanzos and the salmorejo. Stand at the bar, because the tables are a different and slower experience.

  3. 22:00

    La Casa del Flamenco

    Visit

    A small room in Santa Cruz doing one thing: a singer, a guitarist and one or two dancers, close enough that you hear the floor. An hour, no dinner, several shows a night, and a world away from the big dinner-and-show places. Book the same afternoon.

With more time: Underneath the parasols, the Antiquarium holds the Roman and Moorish foundations the builders hit while digging, and entry is free with an Alcázar ticket even a day or two old. If the flamenco room is full, La Carbonería is an old coal yard that puts on free shows most nights and repays turning up early.

Day 2 in Seville

The Alcázar, the archive and the cathedral

The three World Heritage buildings on this day share one square, which makes it the easiest day to walk and the hardest to book. The palace first, on the first slot of the morning, because it is small, popular and full of courtyards that only work when they are half empty.

The archive across the road is free, air conditioned and takes half an hour. The cathedral gets the afternoon, partly because it does not open to visitors until late morning and partly because the climb up the tower is better once the light is low.

  1. 09:30

    Real Alcázar

    Historic

    Begun by the Almohad caliphs in the 12th century and rebuilt in the 1360s by Pedro I in the Mudéjar style, with Muslim craftsmen working for a Christian king. Plaster like lacework, tiled dados, pools and orange courtyards, and gardens that keep going long after you think you have finished. The upper floor is still used by the royal family, which makes it the oldest royal palace in Europe still in use.

  2. 12:30

    Archivo General de Indias

    Other

    Across the square, the merchants' exchange built in the 1580s and turned into the archive of the Spanish empire in 1785: shelf after shelf of the paperwork of the Americas running the length of the upper floor, including Columbus's own journal. Free, quiet, and rarely more than a dozen people in it.

  3. 13:30

    Lunch out of the sun

    Eat

    Two streets north of the cathedral the prices halve. Anywhere with a paella photograph outside is not the one; anywhere with a queue of people speaking Spanish at half past two is.

  4. 15:30

    Cathedral

    Religious

    Built between 1401 and 1506 on the footprint of the great mosque, and the largest Gothic church in the world by volume, with the nave rising to 37 metres. Columbus is buried inside, carried by four kings. The bell tower is the old minaret from the 1190s with a Renaissance belfry added on top, and you climb it by a spiral of shallow ramps rather than stairs, built so a rider could go up on horseback.

With more time: The orange courtyard on the north side of the cathedral is the mosque's own ablutions patio and costs nothing to walk into. Round the corner, the Hospital de los Venerables is a 17th century home for retired priests with a sunken patio and a Velázquez inside.

Day 3 in Seville

Plaza de España, the park and the river

South of the old town the ground opens out into what is left of the 1929 world's fair: a half-mile of pavilions, a park of ficus trees and tiled benches, and one enormous brick semicircle that has stood in for other planets more than once.

Do the square early, before the sun is on it and before the coach parties. The park behind it is the shadiest place in Seville and the right way to spend the hot part of the afternoon, and the walk back along the Guadalquivir at dusk finishes the day at the river.

  1. 09:30

    Plaza de España

    Architecture

    A brick and tile semicircle 200 metres across, built as the host pavilion of the 1929 Ibero-American exhibition, with a canal, four bridges and a tiled alcove for every province of Spain. Find your own, or the one you have been to. It has played Naboo in Star Wars and Cairo in Lawrence of Arabia, and it is free to walk into at any hour.

  2. 11:00

    Parque María Luisa

    Nature

    The gardens behind the square, given to the city in 1893 and landscaped for the same 1929 fair: ficus with roots like walls, tiled benches, ponds, and two pavilions from the exhibition that are now museums. The deepest shade in Seville, and the reason this is the day to be out of the centre at two in the afternoon.

  3. 13:30

    Late lunch, then out of the heat

    Eat

    Eat near the old tobacco factory at the top of the park, then take the standard Andalusian approach to the hours between three and six, which is to be somewhere with a fan and no plans.

  4. 18:30

    Torre del Oro

    Architecture

    A twelve-sided Almohad watchtower on the river bank, built around 1220 to anchor a chain across the water and close the port to enemy ships. It holds a small maritime museum and the roof gives you the bend in the Guadalquivir with Triana on the far bank. Come at the end of the day and cross the bridge afterwards.

With more time: The old tobacco factory between the park and the centre is the one from Carmen and is now the university, open to walk through in term time. On the far bank, Triana's ceramic workshops and the covered market are the reason to keep going once you have crossed the bridge.

Day 4 in Seville

Two courtyard palaces before the train

The last morning is for the private houses, which are the part of Seville most people skip and the part that explains how the merchants actually lived. Both of these are lived in or were until recently, and both are ten minutes from the centre in the direction of the station.

Neither needs more than an hour, and the walk between them goes through the streets east of the parasols where the city is at its most ordinary and its most likeable.

  1. 09:30

    Casa de Pilatos

    Historic

    A 16th century palace built by a family who had just come back from Jerusalem, which is where the name comes from, and the best Mudéjar courtyard in the city outside the Alcázar: tiled to shoulder height, Roman statues in the corners, a fountain in the middle. The upper floor is a separate guided ticket and the family still uses it.

  2. 11:15

    Palacio de Las Dueñas

    Historic

    Ten minutes north, the House of Alba's Seville residence, 15th century and still furnished as a home rather than arranged as a museum: paintings, tiles, a courtyard of columns and a lemon tree. The poet Antonio Machado was born in one of its outbuildings in 1875.

  3. 12:30

    Last coffee before Santa Justa

    Eat

    It is fifteen minutes on foot from here to the station, or five in a taxi. Anywhere on the Alameda has a terrace and no hurry.

With more time: With a later train, the fine arts museum in an old convent northwest of here holds the best collection of Spanish Golden Age painting outside Madrid, and takes an hour and a half. The Roman town of Italica, where two emperors were born, is half an hour out by bus if you have a whole morning.

Before you go

Where to stay

Santa Cruz, the old Jewish quarter east of the cathedral, is the postcard and the obvious choice: whitewashed lanes, orange trees, and two minutes from everything on the second day. It is also almost entirely given over to visitors, and the lanes are narrow enough that a suitcase is a nuisance.

Alfalfa and the streets around the wooden parasols are five minutes further north and a good deal more ordinary, in the useful sense: bars that were there before the tourists and prices to match. Best all-round base for four days.

Triana, across the river, is the old sailors' and potters' quarter and still has its own character. Ten minutes on foot from the cathedral over the bridge, cheaper, and the evening walk back across the water is a reason in itself.

Getting in and around

High speed trains from Madrid take about two and a half hours and arrive at Santa Justa, a fifteen minute walk or a short bus ride northeast of the centre. From Barcelona it is closer to five and a half hours, which is the point at which flying starts to make sense.

The airport is about 10 km northeast and the EA bus runs into the centre every half hour or so for a few euros, stopping at Santa Justa on the way. Taxis to the centre run on a fixed airport tariff, so there is nothing to negotiate.

Inside the city, walk. There is one tram line, a metro that goes nowhere a visitor needs, and a bike hire scheme that is genuinely useful because Seville is flat and has proper cycle lanes along the river. Nothing in these four days is more than half an hour on foot from anything else.

The historic centre is largely pedestrian and the lanes in Santa Cruz are too narrow for a car to turn around in. If you are driving in Andalusia, park outside the centre and pick the car up on the way out.

What to book ahead

The Alcázar is the one that matters. It sells timed entry online, it sells out days ahead in spring and autumn, and the queue for the handful of unbooked tickets forms before the gates open. Take the earliest slot going: the courtyards are a different place at half past nine.

The cathedral also sells timed tickets and includes the tower climb. General visiting starts late morning on weekdays, which is why the Alcázar goes first here. There are free entry slots in the early evening on some days, booked online and gone within minutes of release.

Flamenco splits into tourist dinner shows and small rooms that do nothing but the dancing. The small rooms are better, hold forty people, and need booking the same day. Anything advertised with a paella is not the thing.

Semana Santa and the April fair are extraordinary and they take over the city entirely. Rooms triple in price, streets close for hours at a time, and half of what is described here is either shut or unreachable. Go for the festival or go at another time, but do not go expecting both.

Eating, and the heat

Tapas here are ordered and paid for, not given away with a drink, which is Granada's custom rather than Seville's. The way it works is a plate or two at a bar, standing, then move on. Sitting at a table often costs more per dish, and a terrace on a famous square costs more again.

The dishes to look for are local rather than generic: salmorejo, a thick cold tomato cream heavier than gazpacho, espinacas con garbanzos, spinach and chickpeas with cumin left over from the Moors, and the fried fish that Andalusia does better than anywhere. Sherry from Jerez, an hour south, is the drink that belongs with all of it.

In July and August the temperature regularly passes 40 degrees and the middle of the day is genuinely dangerous rather than merely uncomfortable. Do the outdoor things before noon, go inside or to a room with air conditioning from two until six, and treat the evening as the main part of the day. In April, May and October none of this applies.

What stays with people about Seville is not usually a monument. It is the smell of orange blossom in March, a bar with sawdust on the floor at eleven at night, a bat going over the river while somebody practises guitar badly on the wall.

If you add days, go south rather than back north. Jerez for sherry and horses is an hour away, Córdoba's mosque is three quarters of an hour by fast train, and Cádiz sits on the Atlantic at the end of the line.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Is four days enough for Seville?
It is generous for the city and about right if you want to enjoy it rather than march through it. Three would cover the famous buildings. The fourth is what buys you an afternoon in Triana, a second flamenco room, or a morning at Italica.
How far ahead do I need to book the Alcázar?
A week in spring and autumn, more around Easter, and a few days the rest of the year. The early slots go first and they are the ones worth having. Turning up on the day means a long queue for whatever is left, usually in the afternoon when the courtyards are at their busiest.
Seville or Granada?
Granada if you want one extraordinary building and a mountain behind it. Seville if you want a whole city: bigger, livelier, more to eat, more to walk. They are two and a half hours apart by bus or train and the honest answer is that most trips should include both.
How bad is the summer heat?
July and August regularly reach 40 degrees and occasionally more, and the nights stay in the twenties. It is genuinely limiting rather than a matter of toughing it out. April, May, October and November are the good months, and winter is mild, cheap and mostly sunny.
Is it worth going during Semana Santa or the April fair?
If the festival is the reason for the trip, yes, and it is unlike anything else in Europe. If sightseeing is the reason, no: prices triple, the centre is closed by processions for hours at a stretch, and the buildings on these days keep short hours or shut.
Can I move these days around?
Yes, keeping two things in place: the Alcázar first thing rather than after lunch, and the outdoor day out of the middle of the afternoon in summer. Copy the trip into JourneyComposer and the four days arrive as an editable plan with everything on the map.