Alcázar

Lonely Planet review

A World Heritage monument, the Alcázar is Seville's Alhambra, smaller but just as beautiful.

Originally founded as a fort for the Cordoban governors of Seville in 913, the Alcázar is intimately associated with the lives and loves of several later rulers. These include the extraordinary Christian king Pedro I of Castile (r 1350-69), who was known either as Pedro el Cruel or as Pedro el Justiciero (the Justice-Dispenser), depending which side you were on.

The Alcázar has been expanded or reconstructed many times in its 11 centuries of existence, making it a complicated building to understand, but in the end this only increases its fascination. In the 11th century, Seville's prosperous Muslim taifa rulers developed the original fort by building a palace called Al-Muwarak (The Blessed) in what's now the western part of the Alcázar. The 12th-century Almohad rulers added another palace east of this, around what's now the Patio del Crucero.

Christian Fernando III moved into the Alcázar when he captured Seville in 1248, and several later Christian monarchs used it as their main residence.

Fernando's son Alfonso X replaced much of the Almohad palace with a Gothic one. Between 1364 and 1366 Pedro I created the Alcázar's crown jewel, the sumptuous Mudejar Palacio de Don Pedro, partly on the site of the old Al-Muwarak palace. The Catholic Monarchs, Fernando and Isabel, set up court here in the 1480s as they prepared for the conquest of Granada. Later rulers created the Alcázar's lovely gardens.