Castles · Tour

Private Alcázar for the Ceramics and Plasterwork of Mudéjar Seville

The Alcázar is the oldest palace in Europe still in use, and on a private visit there is time to look at what it is actually made of. That means the ceramics and the plasterwork. The tiled dados run at eye level through every room, laid in geometric patterns that repeat without ever quite repeating. Above them the plaster is carved to a depth that catches raking light, so the same wall reads differently at ten in the morning and at four in the afternoon. Mudéjar is the word for it, and the word carries the history. It describes Muslim craftsmen working for Christian patrons after the conquest, in Islamic forms, for kings who had just taken the city from the people who invented them. The Alcázar is the largest surviving argument that those two things could happen in the same building. A private guide can slow down for that, which a group of thirty cannot. The gardens follow, and they are famous in their own right. The group meets in the middle of the Plaza del Triunfo, at the statue of the Virgin.