Alcazar, Seville, Spain

The Alcazar: Built by a Christian King Who Preferred Islamic Architecture

When Castilian King Pedro I commissioned the expansion of the Alcazar in the 1360s, he hired Muslim craftsmen from Granada and Morocco to build him a palace in Mudéjar style. This was a political statement of some complexity: Pedro was a Christian monarch building in the aesthetic tradition of his Muslim rivals, with Arabic inscriptions running along the walls of his throne room. The decision was not an accident. He had seen the Alhambra in Granada and understood that Islamic architecture was, at that moment, the most sophisticated in Europe. The resulting palace – the Palacio de Don Pedro at the heart of the Alcazar complex – is one of the finest Mudéjar buildings anywhere, and it reflects an era when cultural exchange between Christian and Muslim Spain was as real as the warfare between them.

The Real Alcazar is the oldest royal palace still in active use in Europe. Spain’s royal family uses apartments on the upper floors when in Seville for official events; those rooms (the Cuarto Real Alto) can be visited on a separate timed tour that books out first.

Getting In

Tickets cost 15.50 euros for general admission and 5.50 euros for the Cuarto Real Alto separately. The palace uses 30-minute entry time slots and sells out significantly in advance: 2 to 3 weeks ahead during high season (March through June, September through October), and immediately around Easter and long weekends. Book at the official website. Opening hours are 9:30am to 5pm from October through March and 9:30am to 7pm from April through September. The palace is closed January 1, January 6, Good Friday, and Christmas Day.

The Palacio de Don Pedro

The Patio de las Doncellas is the palace’s central courtyard: carved arches, slender columns, reflecting pool, orange trees, and azulejo tilework on the lower walls. The geometry is calibrated to the point of obsession – every element relates to every other in a system of proportions that medieval Islamic architects worked out mathematically. The Salon de Embajadores, the throne room, has a coffered cedar dome of interlocking geometric patterns representing the seven heavens of Islamic cosmology. It is one of the most remarkable interior spaces in Spain.

The Patio del Yeso in the deeper corners of the complex preserves 12th-century Almohad architecture, quieter and more austere than the Mudéjar rooms and genuinely older by two centuries.

The Gardens

The Alcazar gardens behind the palace buildings cover multiple sections in styles spanning five centuries: the Jardin del Estanque with its long reflecting pool, the English Garden with shaded paths, the maze, and the labyrinth of tall cypress hedges. The gardens are the least-crowded part of the complex and worth more time than visitors usually give them. In April and May, the orange blossom scent is overwhelming in the best possible sense.

The Alcazar in Game of Thrones

The Patio de las Doncellas appeared as the Water Gardens of Dorne in Game of Thrones seasons 5 through 7. The filming brought a new cohort of visitors who weren’t necessarily interested in Mudéjar architecture first, and the signage around the palace now quietly acknowledges this. The set dressing added nothing that isn’t already there.

Around the Alcazar

The complex sits immediately adjacent to Seville Cathedral, where Christopher Columbus is buried and where the Giralda tower – a 12th-century Almohad minaret converted to a bell tower after the Reconquista – gives panoramic views over the city. El Rinconcillo on Calle Gerona, Seville’s oldest tapas bar (opened 1670), is 15 minutes’ walk and is the right choice for lunch after the palace. Hotel Alfonso XIII, directly across from the Alcazar and built for the 1929 Ibero-American Exposition in Mudéjar Revival style, is the appropriate luxury option if your budget runs to it.