Down to the River

Sevilla, Saturday, March 15, 2025

Parental alert! Nudity below.

We started the day by a further exploration of the neighborhoods to the north. Sue and I made our way to the Basilica de la Macarena, which houses a much revered statue of the Virgin. The statue was originally housed in the church of San Gill, but a new home was especially constructed for her in 1949.

The statue is a Dolorosa of the seventeenth century, probably by Pedro Roldan; by tradition, though, it is attributed to his daughter, La Roldana, because worshipers feel that only a woman could reproduce such deep feeling.

The cult that venerates her is kind of extraordinary. The Duchess of Alba lends her jewelry to her for the processions of Holy Week, while the famous Cordoban toreador Manolete donated his most famous costume, the ‘suit of light’ to the Basilica’s treasury. If you look closely at the picture above, you’ll see two children at the base of the statue. As worshipers come forward and kiss the Virgin’s feet, the kids wipe her clean…perhaps even with antiseptic toilettes!

We had a few minutes before meeting Paul and Sue, so we did a quick tour of San Luis de los Franceses by the architect Leonardo de Figueroa. It is the church of the Jesuits, and the interior is like a miniaturized Gesu in Rome.

The church’s patio was interesting, though: perhaps it is the Patio de los Ollas?

We then met Paul and Sue for our tour of the Palacio de las Dueñas, the Seville residence of the Dukes of Alba, one of the most important Spanish aristocratic families. The palace is gorgeous, surrounded by an interlocking series of gardens.

The palace itself, in Renaissance style with significant Moorish influences, dates from the late fifteenth century. It is built around a central courtyard with palms and “false Olives.”

The palace was opened other the public only in 2016; the upper floor rooms are the private residence of the Duke and his family. The public rooms are lovely, if perhaps a bit overstuffed with “aristocratic” furniture.

The audio guide was informative, but obsessed with name dropping. If you aren’t interested in Spanish aristocratic heredity, your ears will soon glaze over. Without boring you with too much detail, it is interesting to note that the current Duke is actually named Don Carlos Fitz-James Stuart. María Cayetana de Silva, the 13th Duchess of Alba, had an interesting life; the was rumored to be intimate with Goya and be the subject of his famous La Maja Desnuda.

She died without issue and the title passed to a somewhat obscure Scottish house, the Dukes of Berwich (themselves descended from an illegitimate son of James II of England). Sorry! I know this was a rabbit hole.

The Palacio is enormously interesting; we were delighted to have found it since it isn’t in the main tourist guides.

After the obligatory siesta, we hopped a cab to the area along the river, just south of the Cathedral.

First stop was at the Hospital de la Caritas, founded in 1674 to care for the sick and aging, tasks that still performs today. The five blue tile scenes on the facade were designed by Murillo.

We weren’t able to enter the chapel, which apparently has some of the most sumptuous baroque sculpture in Sevilla.

The riverbank is less than 100 yards away; along its shore sits the Torre del Oro. This dodecagonal watchtower was constructed by the Almohads in the first years of the 13th century. It served as an anchor in the city’s defenses: it held one end of a chain that could be used to block river traffic, and it served to buttress a defensive wall that ran from Alcazar to the river.

A couple of hundred yards upstream is the Plaza de Toros of Seville. Since our stop at the bullfighting museum in Cordoba, Sue has been fascinated by the spectacle of the bullfight. So a visit to the ring was inevitable. They actually do a very nice job, with a museum stuffed with paintings, lithographs, costumes, and implements.

In the passageway around the ring there are examples of Toro taxidermy.

The ring itself is rather beautiful, as this picture of an aspiring toreador clearly shows.

Next stop was Maria Luise Park, the site of the Iberian-American Exposition of 1929. The park itself is gorgeous, a mixture of tropical and peninsular plants.

The exposition was an attempt to improve relations between Spain and countries with which it shared historical ties. Many of the buildings, like the Hotel Alfonso III, were part of the Spanish contribution. Most, but not all of the national pavilions were designed by Sevillan architects in a style that came to be known as Regionalismo. Although this style drew on earlier movements such as Art Nouveau and English Arts and Crafts, Regionalismo was deeply historicist, drawing in turn from Mudejar, Renaissance, and Baroque models. Here are a few examples.

Mudejar Pavilion (Anibal Gonzales; 1914)

Peruvian Pavilion (Manuel Piqueras Cotolí)

The grandest of the pavilions, though, is the complex in the Plaza de Espane designed by Anibal Gonzalez to serve as the centerpiece of the exposition. Let’s start with a rather poor aerial view, which one needs to get a sense of the scale of this thing.

This image gives a sense of the way that the complex sits in its setting.

And this is one of the towers that flank the thing.

If you follow the light in the last two photos, you’ll see that the sun was just beginning to break through the clouds in the first, which gave way to one of the few moments of full sunshine in our time in “Sunny Spain.”

Dinner was in a place in the twisting streets north of our hotel. Lalola is the creation of the well-known chef Javi Abascal. The setting is not exactly intimate: the restaurant occupies a 16th century mansion that has been modernized. The original space, though, is so vast that the attempts to scale it down have seen limited success. Not that we minded once the delicious food began to arrive!