Seville Cathedral

The incredible Seville Cathedral. After its completion in the early 16th century, Seville Cathedral supplanted Hagia Sophia as the largest cathedral in the world. It’s a pretty amazing place with so many rooms and corridors it’s easy to get totally lost!

Interestingly it began as a mosque, ordered by Almohad caliph Abu Yaqub Yusuf in 1172. The new mosque was dedicated in 1182, but was not completed until 1198. Shortly after Seville’s conquest by Ferdinand III, Yusuf’s mosque was converted into the city’s cathedral. Its orientation was changed and its spaces partitioned and adorned to suit Christian worship practices.

By July 1401, city leaders decided to build a new cathedral to replace the grand mosque that had served as the cathedral until then. According to local oral tradition, the members of the cathedral chapter said: “Hagamos una Iglesia tan hermosa y tan grandiosa que los que la vieren labrada nos tengan por locos” (“Let us build a church so beautiful and so grand that those who see it finished will take us for mad”).

Work began in 1402 and continued for over a century, not being completed until 1594. Seville’s subsequent prosperity resulted in many additions to the building in Renaissance and Plateresque style.

Seville Cathedral was the site of the baptism of Infante Juan of Aragon in 1478, the only son of the Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile. The funerary monuments for cardinals Juan de Cervantes and Pedro González de Mendoza are located among its chapels. Christopher Columbus and his son Diego are also buried in the cathedral.

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