Seville

Our guide pronounces this sah-VEE-yah.

Before we visit Seville, a quick snap of Loja (lo-HA), where we stayed for four nights while exploring the Iberian peninsula.

I took this early one cold morning when the fog was trapped. I've done a pretty severe edit of my photos or I'll never keep up, so next is a whistle stop of the Royal Alcázar palace in Seville. Parts of it are still private and used by the royal family.

The sultans had palaces on the site from 900s to 1200s, when the Christians conquered Seville. King Alfonso then built the palace we see today.

This is the chapel where Columbus and other famous Spanish (and Portugese) navigators came to pray before their expeditions. The navigators would take the Guadalquivir River to the Atlantic Ocean 60 miles away. Many would never return, dying in the Philippines, Central America, at sea... They prayed to the Virgin Mary to protect them, as all mothers pray for their sons.

The palace was built by muslim craftsmen so, like the mosque/cathedral in Cordoba, it is extremely ornate. Here is one of many intricate roofs.

The tile patterns on every wall were different. But these tiles are cut individually and dyed different colours, i.e. every colour is a different tile.

In later periods, we had majolica tile, where multiple colours were drawn onto each tile.

The wall above is in this hall:

I am well beyond remembering the significance of each room/hall.

I think doing Cordoba, Seville and Granada in three days has been a bit much for my poor brain to process.

We toured gardens as well as many rooms in the palace.

This is the only photo so far of Eddis and I. We're both really enjoying the tour, in case that doesn't come across.

Next we went to the site of the Ibero American Exposition, which I have struggled to understand. In 1929, the Spanish government built the hall below and invited countries from the Americas to build their own exhibition halls. Each had exhibits of art, culture, industry. The idea was to encourage trade. Keeping in mind the Spanish were kicked out of their colonies in the mid to late 1800s, it seems a bit too soon.

I guess I'm hung up on the genocide of indigenous people in the Americas by the conquistadors. So it doesn't make sense to me that Spain's main exhibit was about Columbus. Are the countries of the Americas eager to come to Seville to learn about Columbus? Peru's main exhibit was about pre-Columbian art, which I think was thumbing their nose at the Spanish. America's exhibit was about airplanes, air conditioners, etc. Anyway, another chapter of history of which I feel very poorly informed. Maybe the governing class of the American countries were of Spanish decent and quite happy to come to Seville to hawk their wares.

15 March