Qualla: Seville Cathedral

Seville Cathedral: Introduction

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Anual, CC BY 3.0. "Let us build a church so great that those who see it finished will think we are mad." The cathedral chapter of Seville reportedly declared this in 1401, and they delivered. Rising on the bones of a grand Almohad mosque, the Cathedral of Saint Mary of the See sprawls across more than 15,000 square meters of consecrated ground -- its Gothic nave stretching 126 meters long, 76 meters wide, and soaring 42 meters at the crossing. When it was completed in the early 16th century, it displaced Hagia Sophia as the largest cathedral on Earth, a title the Byzantine church had held for a millennium.

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Image: Anual | CC BY 3.0

Seville Cathedral: Minaret into Bell Tower

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ingo Mehling, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Giralda is the cathedral's most recognizable feature, but it began life as something else entirely. In 1184, the Almohad caliph Abu Yaqub Yusuf commissioned architect Ben Ahmad Baso to build a grand minaret for Seville's new mosque, modeled on the Koutoubia Mosque in Marrakes...

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Image: Ingo Mehling | CC BY-SA 4.0

Seville Cathedral: The Bones of Kings and Explorers

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit PEPE GADEIRAS, CC BY-SA 4.0. The royal chapel holds the remains of Ferdinand III, the warrior-king who took Seville from the Moors, alongside his son Alfonso the Wise and their descendant Pedro the Cruel. But the cathedral's most visited tomb belongs to Christopher Columbus, whose elaborate 19th-century monu...

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Image: PEPE GADEIRAS | CC BY-SA 4.0

Seville Cathedral: Art Thieves and Sacred Paintings

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Shawn Lipowski (Shawnlipowski), CC BY-SA 3.0. The cathedral contains 80 chapels and was once said to host 500 daily masses. Among its treasures is Bartolome Esteban Murillo's The Vision of St. Anthony, painted in 1656. In November 1874, thieves cut the figure of Saint Anthony out of the canvas and vanished. Months later, a S...

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Image: Shawn Lipowski (Shawnlipowski) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Seville Cathedral: Mosque Beneath the Nave

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Asterion at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 2.5. Fragments of the original mosque survive in plain sight. The Patio de los Naranjos -- the Court of the Oranges -- was once the mosque's ablution courtyard, where worshippers cleansed themselves before prayer. Its fountain still flows, and orange trees still shade the flagstones. ...

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Image: Asterion at English Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 2.5