Seville and Western Andalusia

Seville and Western Andalusia Travel Guide

All the romantic images of Andalusia -- and Spain in general -- spring vividly to life in Seville. Spain's fourth-largest city is an olé cliché of matadors, flamenco, tapas bars, gypsies, geraniums, and strolling guitarists. So tantalizing is this city that many travelers spend their entire Andalusian time here -- but don't; Western Andalusia holds many surprises, from the aristocratic towns and Roman ruins of Seville's campiña (fertile plains) to the farmlands, sandy coastline, and tree-clad sierras of the neighboring provinces of Cádiz and Huelva.

Predating Seville by a millennium, the ancient city of Cádiz sits like a worn but still-shining jewel at the tip of a sandy isthmus in an Atlantic bay. Stretching north from here is the gently sloping Marco de Jerez area, bordered by the towns of Jerez de la Frontera, Sanlúcar de Barrameda, and Puerto de Santa María -- a land of bull ranches, prancing Andalusian horses, and one of the world's best-known wines, sherry, aged in cobweb-filled cellars that have barely changed in centuries.

In the province of Huelva, across the Guadalquivir River from the sherry region, stretches Doñana National Park, where marshy wetlands alternate with pine forests and shifting sand dunes. Beyond the park are coastal towns that played key roles in modern Western history: Christopher Columbus set sail from these shores in 1492. To the north is the Sierra de Aracena where free-range Iberian pigs fatten in one of Andalusia's prettiest highland oak forests.

Today's Andalusian scenery is of fairly recent vintage. Flowing west at a sluggish pace from Jaén's Sierra Morena to the Atlantic Ocean, the mighty Guadalquivir River has shaped the landscape and history of southwestern Spain. Two thousand years ago, as the capricious river shifted course, it left the thriving Roman city of Itálica high and dry. As Itálica slid gradually into oblivion, nearby Hispalis -- today's Seville -- rose on the river's banks 11 km (7 mi) away. Seville's fortunes would continue to climb under the Moors, and again after its conquest by the Castilian Christians under King Ferdinand "the Saint" in the 13th century. During their reign the city acquired its cathedral -- the largest Gothic building in the world -- and its Moorish-inspired palace, the Alcázar.

With the discovery of the New World, Seville reached even dizzier heights of splendor, outshining Madrid in riches and culture as Spanish ships loaded with booty from the Americas sailed upriver past the Torre de Oro (Tower of Gold) and into Seville's port. Much of this treasure was siphoned off to pay for the Spanish throne's increasingly expensive foreign entanglements and bankers' debts, but enough was left over to fuel a cultural flowering and building bonanza that can still be seen today in Seville's lovely houses, courtyards, palaces, and monuments.