When planning a visit to the extremely popular cathedral and Giralda tower, I highly recommend buying the 12 EUR ticket online to avoid the paper ticket queue. I also suggest a later entry time to avoid the pressing crowds, especially when walking up to the top of the Giralda. I was through the line and inside the cathedral in under ten minutes.

The Cathedral of St Mary of the See, as it’s officially known, was consecrated in 1507, 15 years after the fall of Granada and the full reconquest of Spain by Isabella and Ferdinand. It’s immense and, as I wrote earlier, full of world-class paintings and sculptures of most of the Spanish Masters, including Goya. It’s second only to El Prado in Madrid in the size and prominence of its collection. The silver and gold alone must be worth over a $100 million.

The wealth of the Spanish church during the Age of Discovery and for centuries afterward was beyond belief. During its imperial height, Spain colonized much of the Americas, parts of India and the Philippines, named after Philip II. With the massive trade in spices and precious metals, the Catholic Church was the beneficiary of royal patronage and wealth. Although Spain is largely non-religious today, for centuries Spain practiced a particularly intense and omnipresent Catholicism.

The Church exemplified the Catholic doctrines of The Church Militant and The Church Triumphant. It originated The Inquisition during Isabella’s reign, ostensibly to root out heresies suspected of the Conversos and Moriscos, respectively Jews and Moors who converted to Catholicism. Spain also secured approval from the Vatican to appoint its episcopacy without papal permission. The wealth of the Church ultimately engendered fury from the largely illiterate and poor masses, who viewed it as an oppressive overseer. This culminated in waves of anti-clericalism, especially after the election of the Popular Front government in 1936, when many churches, seminaries and monasteries were closed and priests and nuns were executed and imprisoned. The military coup against the Republic quickly seized Sevilla which is why the riches of the Cathedral were spared. During the three-year war the Nationalists, under General Franco, ultimately defeated the Republicans. The former were supported by Hitler and Mussolini, while the former were helped by the USSR and the International Brigades, about which Hemingway and many others wrote.

I’ll insert two slideshows: one of the cathedral itself, including Columbus’ tomb, and then pics taken from the tower.

At the top of the tower, the views of the city are amazing.

After exiting the cathedral, I took a few shots of the tower and the Gothic facade, with the ubiquitous orange trees in the foreground. The last photo is of the original main gate of the former Great Mosque, upon whose ruins the cathedral was built.

Heading back to my Airbnb and dinner, I snapped some shots of the Christmas decorations and the window displays of El Corte Inglés, the upscale Spanish department store chain.