Spain Guide
Andalucía
The Catedral
Opening time: July & Aug Mon– Sat 9.30am–4pm, Sun 2.30–6pm; Sept– June Mon– Sat 11am–5pm, Sun 2.30–6pm
Price: €7.50, under-16s free; ticket valid for Catedral and Giralda
Website: www.catedraldesevilla.es
Seville's Catedral was conceived in 1402 as an unrivalled monument to Christian glory – "a building on so magnificent a scale that posterity will believe we were mad". To make way for this new monument, the Almohad mosque that stood on the proposed site was almost entirely demolished.
The cathedral was completed in just over a century (1402–1506), an extraordinary achievement. Its central nave rises to 42m, and even the side chapels seem tall enough to contain an ordinary church. The total area covers 11,520 square metres, and new calculations have now pushed it ahead of St Paul's in London and St Peter's in Rome as the world's largest church.
From the old mosque, the magnificent Giralda and the Moorish entrance court, the Patio de los Naranjos, were spared, though the patio is somewhat marred by Renaissance embellishments.
Inside the cathedral, the Monument to Christopher Columbus is actually the explorer's tomb; his body was transferred here from Havana in 1902 (though DNA tests have failed to prove the authenticity of the remains). The mariner's coffin is held aloft by four huge allegorical figures, representing the kingdoms of León, Castile, Aragón and Navarra.
Though sheer size and grandeur are the chief characteristics of the cathedral, two other qualities stand out with equal force: the rhythmic balance and interplay between the parts, and an impressive overall simplicity and restraint in decoration. All successive ages have left monuments of their own wealth and style, but these have been limited to the two rows of side chapels. In the main body of the cathedral only the great box-like structure of the coro stands out, filling the central portion of the nave.
The coro extends and opens onto the Capilla Mayor, dominated by a vast Gothic retablo composed of 45 carved scenes from the Life of Christ. The lifetime's work of a single craftsman, Fleming Pieter Dancart, this is the supreme masterpiece of the cathedral – the world's largest and richest altarpiece, using staggering quantities of gold, and one of the finest examples of Gothic woodcarving.