Seville cathedral

As you will find with many famous buildings in Andalusia, the cathedral has its origins with the Moors.

The cathedral’s bell tower, the Giralda, in fact, is the old minaret that called Muslims in Seville to prayer five times a day. You may find it strange that the Catholics held on to parts leftover from the Moorish reign, but this is quite typical throughout the history of Andalusia.

Until Ferdinand III conquered the city in 1248, the space where the cathedral lays was the site of the Almohad mosque, as it had been for nearly a century. As the city became one of the Catholic kingdom’s predominant ports, those in charge wanted to build the largest cathedral in the world to prove their wealth and importance to outsiders. In 1402 construction for the lavish cathedral began, and wouldn’t finish until over a century later, in 1506.
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