Seville: The History

 Photo courtesy of concierge.com

As I started preparing for my study abroad trip, I decided to look up the city that I would be my home for three weeks, and what I found astounded me. Seville has a rich history and an extremely diverse culture, as seen in its strong medieval, renaissance, baroque, Moorish architectural presence whose history span over 2,000 years.
During Roman times, the city was known as Hispalis. The nearby Roman city of Italica is well-preserved and gives an impression of how Hispalis may have looked in the later Roman period. Existing Roman features in Seville include the leftovers of an aqueduct. During the 5th and 6th centuries, the Vandals and the Visigoths  conquered of the Roman province of Hispania Baetica
 

After the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula by the Islamic Moors, Seville was an important center for Moorish Spain. The city was taken by the Muslims in 712. In 1248 forces of King Fernando III of Castile won victory in Seville's chapter of the peninsula's Catholic Reconquista. Many original Moorish elements remain, including public structures,  the historic district, and large sections of the fortified city wall and is considered a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Following the 1492 Christopher Columbus expedition to the New World, that departed from Seville's port, the results  began to profit the city, as all goods imported from the New World had to pass through the Casa de Contratacion before being distributed throughout the rest of Spain. A 'golden age of development' commenced, since only sailing ships leaving from and returning to Seville could engage in trade with the Spanish Americas, merchants from Europe and other trade centers needed to go to Seville to acquire New World trade goods. The city's population grew to nearly a million people in the first hundred years after Columbus. The Moors' Palace became the Castilian royal residence, the Alcázar of Seville, with the monarchs only adding on for their own needs. The upper levels of the Alcázar are still used by the royal family as the official Seville residence and are administered by the Patrimonio Nacional. 

The Gothic architecture of the Seville Cathedral was built during the 15th century as and was originally built to show the wealth that Seville had. It is considered to be one of the largest cathedrals in world. Construction began in 1402 at the site of a former mosque and had to be rebuilt several times due to earthquakes and poor architectural planning. The builders used some columns and elements from the mosque, and most famously the giralda, a bell tower.


In the late 16th century the monopoly was broken, with the port of Cádiz also authorized as a port of trade. The Great Plague of Seville in 1649 reduced the population by almost half, and it would not recover until the early 1800s. As the Spanish Empire became unified and ruled by monarchs from European dynasties the Kingdom of Castile lost influence. By the 18th century international importance was in decline. After the silting up of the harbor by the Guadalquivir (river) upriver shipping ceased and the city went into relative economic decline. Seville's development in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was characterized by population growth and increasing industrialization, unlike the rest of Andalusia.