"Let those who see it built will think we were mad"

4/12/2010

When tourists arrive in Seville, most of them make a bee-line straight to the Cathedral.  It is one of the largest in the world, and certainly the largest of the Gothic cathedrals.  However, seeing as we feel as though we live here, we have kept putting this off until now, our second-to-last day in Seville.  A mad scramble to find out whether the our wonderful walking tour guide was available resulted in a last minute booking and our rushing to the meeting place after lunch.



 It certainly did not disappoint.  The interior of the cathedral was absolutely massive, housing 80 separate smaller chapels, and simply walking around it took a long time.  Our tour guide walked us around to the most famous of the chapels, explained small details and unlocked secrets that we otherwise would never have known.






 For example, in one of the chapels hung a large painting by Goya, one of the most famous and beloved Spanish painters.  the painting depicted two young girls holding palm leaves, looking up toward the heavens, with a large lion licking the feet of one of the girls.  These girls, Justa and Rufina, are the two protectors of Seville because they refused to bow down to Roman gods and were martyred.  However, legend goes that it took the Romans three attempts to finally kill the girls because fires refused to light and lions refused to eat them.  Later this week, when I traveled to the Madrid and walked around the Prado museum hunting for Goyas, I came across a small miniature of this exact painting, with all the details in-tact, that served as the blue-print for Goya before he painted the larger one in the Cathedral.  It was one of my favorite moments when I stumbled upon this, and I even took Marco back to it later that evening to show him seeing as he was stuck in meetings during the day, poor thing.

Another amazing room housed the treasures of the Cathedral, and there were plenty. The most resplendent was the crown that was placed on Mary.  At first, all I saw were the letters at the top of the crown glittering like nothing I had ever seen before in the light.  I was puzzled because the lettering were so fine that I was already amazed that gold could be worked in such detail back then.  Only when I looked closer did I notice that it was laced with tiny diamonds, rubies, and other precious stones that made the entire thing look like a focused sun-beam.  And also, the white dress worn by the angel in the front and center of the crown was carved from a complete pearl.  They were clearly skimping on cost, these people, while they were at it, why not just carve a replica of Mary from a complete slab of diamond?

In the same room were also lots of gold and silver cases housing the relics of saints.  A particularly large case, a kind of elaborate magnifying glass, held what looked like a long brown twig. I was very puzzled at why that would be so revered.  Only then did my guide reveal that this was a gift from a French king who took part in the Crusades and apparently came upon Christ's crown of thorns.  He broke one part off, which is now housed in the silver case that was right in front of my eyes.  Apparently no DNA tests have ever been performed on the relic to confirm its origins because no one in Seville particularly wants to know the answer....

The highlight of the cathedral had to be Christopher Columbus' tomb, which was held up by the personifications of the four regions of Spain: Castile, Leon, Aragon and Navarre.  Apparently, poor Christopher did more traveling after his death than when he was alive, as he first interred at Valladolid, then at the monastery of La Cartuja in Seville. In 1542 the remains were transferred to the Dominican Republic. In 1795, when France took over that entire island, Columbus' remains were moved to Havana, Cuba. After Cuba became independent following the Spanish-American War in 1898, the remains were moved back to Spain, to the Cathedral of Seville.  Then, because the Dominicans still claimed that Columbus' remains never left their country and that they had sent another body to Cuba, in order to finally resolve this mystery, Columbus' current surviving relative had the body removed and sent to Houston, where DNA tests were done and finally confirmed a match with Columbus' brother's DNA.  Now, finally, this poor guy can rest! 





The entire structure of the Cathedral took almost a century to finish, and was built on top of what previously was a mosque.  The new cathedral kept the Minaret of the mosque in tact, and climbing it revealed the best place to see a view of Seville's old town seeing as it is in the heart of El Central.  

Climbing the Minaret was great fun because instead of steps, ramps were installed - it's necessary because altogether there were 34 floors of ramps! I don't think we would have had the use of our legs had it been flights of stairs.  Small windows from each level wafted in with gentle breezes and dazzling sunlight, giving us incentive to go up even faster. The views from the top were also absolutely breath-taking and well worth the journey.