The largest church in the world by area, and only shorter than St Peter's and St. Paul's in London, Seville's Cathedral is one of the great sights in Spain (at least for me). Built over the site of a mosque, the church is square in overall shape, and the builders determined to build a church so vast that feature generation would "consider them mad". The only remnant of the vast mosque it replaced is the tower, which was a minaret, and for the most part retains its original features. However, the Christian rulers built a bell tower on top, and topped that off with a weathervane (a giralda) giving the tower its present name.
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| The Giralda |
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| The first impression is pretty overwhelming. |
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| This may give you an idea of the huge space involved. |
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The altar screen is the largest in the world at 80 feet. It contains hundreds of figures telling the
story of the life of Jesus. It is wood, covered with gold leaf. |
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| An alabaster tomb. |
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| Murillo's painting of St. Francis. The painting is huge, and at one point, thieves tried to steal it. It proved too bit to move, so they cut out just the square that contained the Saint. If you look close, you can see where it was repaired. The painting was lost for a time, then found in a rubbish collection! |
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This is the chapel dedicated to the patron saint of Sailors. There is a plaque with the names of the
16 sailors that returned (out of 400) that went with Magellan on the first circumnavigation of the globe, in 1492, a momentous year. |
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| This is Christropher Columbus's tomb. His coffin is held up by four statues representing Castile, Aragon, Leon and Navarre. |
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| The stained glass is from the 15th. century. |
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| There are four organ facades, like Granada. The organ(s) has 10,000 pipes. |
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The largest Gothic cathedral in the world, the third largest in length,
it was one of the greatest sights of the trip. |
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