6/23 – 6/24/14. Seville, Spain
Where the Castilian plateau is tan and gold, Seville is green. Palms line the streets, and every old palace holds a garden at its heart. This fertility is part of the reason Seville, a Roman foundation, has been one of the most important cities in southern Iberia for upwards of two millennia. A royal capital under the Almoravids, Almohads, and Castilians in succession, its era of greatest importance coincided with the first two centuries of the Spanish Empire, when it was the port into which all the wealth of the New World flowed. These centuries of power and wealth have left a rich architectural legacy, which I have only begun to explore.
I started yesterday, however, with the most impressive building of all. The Cathedral of Seville is not only the biggest Gothic cathedral in the world, but the third largest church anywhere, exceeded only by St. Peter’s in Rome and a modern Brazilian building. My first impression was of extent rather than volume. Since the choir and colossal altarpiece fill the building’s center, its immensity only becomes apparent as one begins to walk the aisles. New spaces continually emerge from the murk, lit by stained glass windows too small and high to chase shadows from the frescoes and paintings of the many side chapels. In the middle of one dim transept stands the tomb of Christopher Columbus, brought from Cuba at the end of the Spanish-American war. The real highlight of a visit to the cathedral, however, is the awe-inspiring retable, eighty feet of sculpted and enameled gold. The celebration of high mass against such a backdrop must be mesmerizing.
After an hour and a half or so, when the sheer volume of art and treasure in the cathedral had become almost physically exhausting, I walked across the street to the Archive of the Indies, an eighteenth-century building established to house the royal records of the Spanish Empire from its foundation to its collapse. A number of special exhibits were on display in the quiet galleries, notably including the original copy of the Treaty of Tordesillas. But the seemingly endless shelves, each holding a hundred or so neatly boxed parcels of documents, were the most compelling attraction, and an eloquent witness to the scale and duration of the Spain’s involvement in the New World. I have always envied historians with access to such rich archives; after seeing these miles of groaning shelves, however, I find myself more inclined to pity them.
Another short walk brought me to the Alcazar, the magnificent palace of the Almoravid and Castilian kings. Although only a few of the oldest public rooms date back to the period of Islamic rule, the Christian Pedro the Cruel (so called by his nobles, whom the king had a nasty habit of killing) was responsible for most of the Moslem-influenced architecture visible today. Having never visited the Alhambra, I have no ultimate standard against which to assess the beautifully tiled rooms and the gardens they overlook. The effect reminded me, however, of the harem in the Topkapi palace at Istanbul – a space poised somewhere between public and private, borrowing its charms from both spheres. Although the interiors of the public rooms were the artistic highlights, I found myself spending more time in the formal gardens beyond. Little here dates back more than three centuries, but a space shaded by stands of palm and pine, and caressed by an apparently perpetual breeze, was hard to resist towards the end of a long afternoon.
In a rare display of restraint, I decided to leave a number of attractions for the next day, and instead went for a long walk along the Guadalquivir River. The evening air, still hot and humid, seemed to ready to kindle in the sunset. As I walked back toward my hotel, I silently thanked myself for reserving an air-conditioned room.
It was raining this morning when my bus arrived at Santiponce, a town about five miles outside Seville. The town itself is a quiet, forgettable place, redolent of overripe oranges. It is built around and upon, however, one of the most remarkable Roman sites in Spain: Italica, hometown of the emperors Trajan and Hadrian. Always something of a satellite to nearby Seville (Roman Hispalis), Italica was elevated from insignificant colony to provincial showplace by the efforts of her two most famous native sons. Trajan seems to have encouraged or financed the construction of a new bath complex in the old city center; and Hadrian, never to be outdone, laid out a whole new neighborhood, complete with an even larger bath complex and an immense amphitheater. Although much of Italica lies unexcavated beneath the straggling houses of Santiponce, Hadrian’s extension has been protected from modern development, and serves as the nucleus of a large archaeological park.
I arrived at 8:45, assured by my faithful guidebook that the site opened at 8:30. This being Spain, the gates were not unlocked until 10. In most countries, archaeologists begin work at dawn; at Italica, they began to file in around 10:30, ready to put in a solid two or three hours before siesta. Being of a more restless disposition, I filled the hour before the site opened exploring the other Roman remains scattered through the modern city. The first, a Roman theater, was over-restored; the second, Trajan’s bath, was under-excavated. Maybe I was just in a mood to find fault.
When I finally was able to enter the archaeological park proper, my first step was to visit Hadrian’s amphitheater. Though not nearly so well preserved as the examples in Nimes and Arles, this structure, the fourth-largest of its kind ever constructed, continues to impress by virtue of sheer size.
No other building survives as much more than a footprint, though many preserve fine mosaic floors. For me, the site’s finest feature was the view it afforded of the surrounding landscape. In every direction but north, where the white scar of Santiponce blocked all views, the grass-covered hills of the archaeological park overlooked a rolling panorama of unspoiled Andalusian countryside, its colors deepened by contrast with the clouds of a nearby thunderstorm.
On my way out of the site, I passed the archaeologists, who were presumably staging for an early lunch. Just as I began to work on my own sandwich, the bus for Seville pulled up and I leapt aboard, trailing crumbs. Back in Seville, after finishing my meal in a Banyan-shaded square, I visited the fine arts museum. Though unworthy of comparison with the Prado or Thyssen, the collection included a considerable number of fine works from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The “big three” of the Spanish Baroque –Velazquez, Ribera, and Murillo – were all represented, as was their successor Zurburan. As I viewed altarpiece after massive altarpiece, I found myself wondering what possessed Baroque painters to include so damnably many cherubs in their compositions. Nearly every painting had its troop of putti, forming columns under ascending Virgins, bearing instruments of martyrdom, or simply flitting through the background. Such sentimentality is too cheap to be the substance of good art; and if these artists’ clients insisted on an angel or two into every scene, why couldn’t they have gone with something a little more impressive like –say – a seraph with flaming sword?
A little up the street from the art museum hovers the so-called Parasol, a new shopping center covered by a ludicrous postmodern canopy. I was more interested, however, in the basement, where a Roman residential quarter uncovered during construction is presented as a small museum. Like its analogue in Barcelona, this ancient neighborhood is well-served by interpretive signs and models. Particularly interesting were the remains of a factory that produced garum, a sauce rendered from rotting fish that was wildly popular throughout the Roman world.
The municipal archaeological museum was more than a half hour’s walk from the Parasol under increasingly threatening skies. Since I walked most of the way along the Guadalquivir, the way was scenic; and the museum itself justified the footwork involved. Highlights included dozens of statues from Italica, a number of extensive mosaics, and the bronze tablets of a civic law code.
The rain began again as I left the museum, but slackened as I strolled through the adjoining gardens, laid out for an international exposition in 1929. Fountains and fishponds, fringed with flowers and dappled by trees, set a scene of almost tropical lushness. I have never seen a public park so beautiful. The horse-drawn carriages plying the paths were equally picturesque; the ubiquitous manure was not.
Late afternoon brought me to the Casa del Pilate, a lavish sixteenth-century mansion. Embellished – and still partially occupied – by a fabulously wealthy aristocratic family, its gilded and tiled rooms rival the Alcazar for sheer sumptuousness of design. The Alcazar, in fact, was the model for the building’s Mudejar architecture; but this inspiration was coupled with a desire to imitate the villas of Renaissance Italy and the need to accommodate a large collection of antique sculpture. The result is a striking fusion of Islamic and Italic architectural conventions, executed with a complete disregard for expense. I spent ten minutes in the rain-slicked courtyard alone, admiring the Roman sculptures set amid a gilded forest of tile.
