Story
Key Things To Check Out
When to Visit
Key Events
Slice of Nostalgia
What to do
Local Flavours
Local Cousine
Where to Stay?
How to Get There?
Tips & Hints

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Beautiful Seville has had assorted rulers throughout history, including the Romans and the Moors, yet the official motto of its citizens has nevertheless remained "no me ha dejado", i.e. "it (the city) has not abandoned me"!

SevilleMoorish Splendour of Hercules City!

The monumental wealth of Seville is second to none and the best way of getting to know the heritage of this Andalucían city is by strolling through its striking colourful neighbourhoods. Aside from its important monuments and captivating history, Seville is the renowned birthplace of Carmen, Don Juan and Figaro, as well as a vibrant home of numerous friendly people, well-known for their wit, enthusiasm and genuinely welcoming nature. Thus do not longer delay, but rather rush to explore, feel and stay, and fill your spirit to the brim inside Seville’s fabulous historical rim!

Story

Founded on Hercules Shoulders, Spurred by Columbus Stumble

The mythological founder of the city is Hercules (Heracles), who the myth says sailed through the Strait of Gibraltar to the Atlantic and founded trading posts at the current sites of Seville.
Situated on the banks of the Guadalquivir River, Seville has one of the largest historical centres in Europe and a rich Moorish heritage. The city used to be one of the most prosperous ports that carried out trade with the Americas in 15th and 16th century, and streets and squares in the historic quarter of this grand capital of Andalusia have remained lively and busy ever since. They treasure many constructions that have the World Heritage designation and many districts full of distinctive traditional culture.

Key Things To Check Out

Glorious Kingdoms, Caliphates and Dynasties

Many notable civilisations have come and gone through the city of Seville. The Tartessians founded Hispalis, the Romans built the famous Itálica next to it in 207 BC, and the Moors left permanent imprints on the city, ruling from 711 to 1248 AD. The years of highest splendour in Seville however happened after the discovery of America. During the 16th and 17th century its port was one of the most important in Spain, because it had the monopoly of the foreign trade by sea. Thanks to the trade carried out during that period in Seville, many exceptional mansions, stately homes, churches and convents were built.

The Cathedral of Saint Mary of the See

…better known as Seville Cathedral, is the largest Gothic cathedral, the third-largest church in the world and the burial site of Christopher Columbus. The Cathedral reused some columns and elements from the Almohad Great Mosque of Seville, of which the most famous is La Giralda, an imposing minaret converted into a bell tower. The tower’s interior was built with ramps rather than stairs, to allow the Muezzin and others to ride on horseback to the top.

Reales Alcázares Palace

Standing in the white-washed Santa Cruz neighbourhood, Seville Cathedral was registered in 1987 by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, alongside with the adjacent Reales Alcázares Palace. The construction was started in 1181 and continued for over 500 years, mainly in the Mudéjar style, but also in the Renaissance style. The majestic palace contains many splendid rooms, magnificent halls and romantic courtyards enclosed behind the walls, with vast gardens of blended Moorish, Renaissance and English elements surrounding the building.

The Plaza de España

The Plaza de España is a huge half-circle plaza in the Parque de María Luisa (Maria Luisa Park), with buildings continually running around the edge accessible by numerous bridges representing the four ancient kingdoms of Spain. Built in 1928 for the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929, when the entire southern end of the city was redeveloped into an expanse of gardens and grand boulevards, it is a landmark example of the Regionalism Architecture, mixing elements of the Renaissance Revival and Moorish Revival (Neo-Mudéjar) styles of Spanish architecture.

The Metropol Parasol

The Metropol Parasol, in La Encarnación square, is a monumental umbrella-like building and the world’s largest wooden structure finished in 2011. The structure is organized in four levels and consists of six parasols in the form of giant mushrooms, whose design is inspired by the vaults of the Cathedral of Seville and the ficus trees in the nearby Plaza de Cristo de Burgos. This modern architecture structure houses the central market and an underground archaeological complex, with the terrace roof as a city viewpoint.

When to Visit

Enchanting and Dazzling in Spring as well as Summer

There is no better way to get to know the Andalusians than through their many and fascinating traditional festivals, and Seville is no exception. The local fiesta is the moment when every town and village strives to put on a splendid show, not only for themselves but also for those who come from afar to admire and enjoy. Over 3,000 fiestas are celebrated every year in Andalusia, including fairs, pilgrimages and carnivals, mock battles between Moors and Christians and religious processions.

Key Events

Key Events in Seville

Semana Santa

Semana Santa is strictly speaking a religious festival preceding Easter, but for most of the week solemnity isn’t the keynote, as there’s a lot of carousing and frivolity and bars are full day and night with entire families, from grandparents to babies staying up until three or four in the morning. Good Friday morning is the climax, when the procession leaves the churches at midnight and move through the town for most of the night. For months beforehand, the bands practice their short, fervent flamenco style hymns about the Passion and the Virgin’s sorrows throughout the city.

The Seville Fair

The Seville Fair traditionally starts two clear weeks after Semana Santa, in a huge area in Los Remedios, south-west of the city and next to the river. This is a week of serious dancing, drinking, eating and socialising, with late nights being the norm. The sheer size of the April Fair’s spectacle is extraordinary. From around midday until early evening, especially on Tuesday, the first official day of the fair, Seville society parades around the fairground in carriages or on horseback. There are also daily bullfights, generally considered the best of the season.

The Bienal de Flamenco

The Bienal de Flamenco takes place in Seville every other year, in even-numbered years. The most important flamenco festival in the world features all the top artists and dance companies from Spain and around the world and lasts three weeks from September to early October.

Slice of Nostalgia

The Golden Age

Following the 1492 Christopher Columbus expedition to the New World, the results from his claiming territory and trade for the Crown of Castile (incipient Spain) in the West Indies began to profit the city. A “golden age of development” commenced in Seville due to its being the only port awarded the royal monopoly for trade with the growing Spanish colonies in the Americas and the influx of riches from them. Merchants from Europe and other trade centers needed to go to Seville to acquire New World trade goods, so the city’s population grew to more than a hundred thousand people.

What to do

What to do in Seville?

Seville is a prominent business and service centre in the south of Spain and has many hotels distributed all over the city, which enable visitors to discover its endless attractions. Museums and art centres, theme parks, cinemas, theatres and clubs are some of the many leisure options that a great city like Seville holds. Without forgetting, of course, the numerous terraces, inns and bars where visitors can practise one of the most deeply-rooted and tasty traditions in the city: going out for tapas!

Place of Serious Business

Seville is a city open to professional tourism, as over one hundred congresses, exhibitions and other events each year endorse Seville as one of the primary destinations for business tourism in Spain. The refurbished Seville Exhibition and Conference Centre, FIBES, is a social meeting point distinguished by its large-scale light-filled design, its multifunctional capacity and sustainability.

Place of Natural Beauties

Seville is a natural paradise on the banks of the Guadalquivir River, as the entire province and a whole range of nature areas are within easy reach of Andalusia’s capital city. The centre of it is Parque de María Luisa, a “Moorish paradisical style” with a half mile of tiled fountains, pavilions, walls, ponds, benches, and exedras. There are lush plantings of palms, orange trees, Mediterranean pines, and stylized flower beds with bowers hidden by vines.

Place of Excellent Sports

Local Flavours

Tapas, Treats for the Palate

The best place to taste the typical food in Seville is probably in the bars in the historic quarter and in the districts of Triana and La Macarena, where you can enjoy a range of delicious tapas. There is a wide variety of tapas available, but whatever you choose, we recommend washing it down with a cold beer or sherries like Fino and Manzanilla.

Olives
Andalusia is the world’s largest producer of olive oil and its flavour is basic to the region’s cooking. Olive oil feasting starts even at breakfast, when toasted bread is drizzled in virgin oil to savour it with a morning cup of coffee.

Shellfish
The consumption of shellfish in Andalusia is rather high and includes: white shrimp, prawns, murex, baby squid, cuttlefish, various crabs etc. Andalusian cuisine includes also some unusual seafood like ortiguillas, i.e. sea anemones in batter.

Almonds
Almond trees and the nuts they bear are an integral part of life in Andalusia. The countryside is dotted with almond groves, therefore kitchens throughout the region make use of creamy almonds for soups, meat dishes, pastries and seasonal treats.

Local Cousine

Traditional Recipes of Multicultural Origins

This historic city attracts food-lovers from all over the world, as it is where the tapa (small plate of food) was invented after all. You’re never far from an excellent meal, whether tapas or large plates to share (raciones) in a traditional tiled bar or a modern gastro joint. Seville is famous for its cuisine, boasting superb seafood platters next to traditional recipes of multicultural origins, so it’s always worth checking the menu or blackboard for specials of the day.

Gazpacho

Gazpacho is a soup made of raw vegetables and served cold, originating in Andalusia. Gazpacho has ancient roots and there are quite a few theories of its origin, including that it arrived as a soup of bread, olive oil, water and garlic with the Romans. It became a part of Andalusian cuisine, particularly Córdoba and Seville, using stale bread, garlic, olive oil, salt, and vinegar, similar to ajoblanco. The red gazpacho evolved during the 19th century and spread internationally, when tomatoes were added among the ingredients.

Pringá

Pringá is a popular Andalusian dish that consists of roast beef or pork, cured sausages such as chorizo and morcilla, and beef or pork fat slowly cooked for many hours until the meat falls apart easily. Pieces of crusty bread are used to pull away a little meat, sausage and fat. It is a social dish eaten around the family dinner table.

Polvorones

Polvorones are a type of heavy, soft and very crumbly shortbread made of flour, sugar, milk, and nuts, especially almonds. They are produced mostly in Andalusia, where there are about 70 factories in a syndicate that produces polvorones and mantecados. Polvorones were brought to Spain by the Moors, so Spanish Inquisition at one point even decreed that polvorones were to be made using pork fat, as a means of detecting secret Jews and Muslims within the Southern Spanish regions.

Gachas

Gachas is an ancestral basic dish traditionally made of wheat flour, and the traditional way of cooking them consists in frying garlic slices in olive oil until they are golden. Then the flour is added by sprinkling it over the hot oil with one hand and mixing well with the spoon until the mixture is slightly roasted. Salt and water are added to taste and desired consistency, the gachas being ready when they “smell cooked”. There are many variations of the gachas in Andalusia, as the sweet poleá, the gachas colorás, flavoured with paprika or saffron, or the gachas de matanza, served with a stew with curdled blood, liver and offal.

Where to Stay?

Top-Notch Lodging

Seville’s hotel capacity is exemplary, as it has almost 10,000 hotel beds distributed among five and four-star hotels, and around 3,500 units in three star hotels. However, it’s a city of beautifully diverse neighbourhoods and narrow alleyways lined with glorious old palaces and stunning plazas. With so many to choose from, it won’t be difficult to find accommodation in the centre of the city, but if you’re looking for a less busy, quieter getaway, stay in districts situated more towards the outskirts of the city.

How to Get There?

Welcoming City

Plane
Seville Airport is a modern international airport located just a few kilometres outside the city’s centre. It is the sixth busiest inland airport in Spain, with flight connections to about 40 destinations around Europe and Northern Africa and more than four million passengers yearly.
Car
An extensive road network of motorways and dual carriageways makes Seville easily reachable from any point on the peninsula and from other cities of European mainland.
Railroad
The Santa Justa Train Station, a part of the network of high-speed rail serving 18 major cities in Spain, links Seville to Madrid with AVE high-speed train in little over two hours. There is also a five-line commuter rail service that joins the city with its Metropolitan area.
Ship
Seville is the only commercial river port of Spain and the only inland city in the country where cruise ships can arrive in the historical centre.

Tips & Hints

What to know before you go?

The Tripwolf Sevilla travel guide is available in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian, and all the content and features of this travel guide can be used offline with no restrictions. Thanks to the offline maps, you can find your way around whenever you are and also use the relevant subway map in the app itself.

The best way to see Seville is from the tower of Seville Cathedral, the most emblematic lookout of the city – the Giralda. Intuitive and easy to use, the application shows you information about the most attractive places and monuments of this city through simply enlarging the image with your fingers and tapping on points of interest and their labels.

Seville is a city of opera, so maybe you would like to explore the city in an original way and learn more about it. Take a look at the five options for sightseeing itineraries available at the official pages of the National Tourist Board of Spain. These itineraries are not guided tours, but ideas for routes to do at your own pace. However, the associations of guides in Seville have information about the routes, and can be engaged to lead visits in a variety of languages.

The Sevici community bicycle programme has integrated bicycles into the public transport network and bicycles are now available for hire around the city at low cost. Green bicycle lanes can be seen on most major streets and the number of people using bicycles as a means of transport in Seville has increased substantially in recent years.

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