Seville

The Giralda has no stairs, only a ramp to the top. It was built so a rider could go up on horseback. The brick lower half is the minaret left from the mosque; the bell stage above came later. Inside, four figures for four kingdoms bear Columbus's coffin.

A Christian king had Muslim craftsmen build it, so the style and the owner do not match. The upper floor is still royal, takes its own ticket and admits a set number a day. Under the garden lie the vaulted baths that cooled the place in summer.

The half-moon building went up for the 1929 exposition. Tiled alcoves along its wall each take one Spanish province and paint an event from it, and rowing boats are let out on the channel in front. Most of it is government offices now, closed inside.

Over the bridge on the far bank, it was long counted a separate town from Seville. Ceramics, sailors and flamenco all came out of here. Under the riverside market the excavated cells of the Inquisition court have been left open.

Six timber parasols glued into shape sit over the square. A Roman house turned up while the car park below was dug, the design changed, and the remains are shown on the basement floor. The rooftop walk is ticketed, and the queue peaks around sunset.

The lanes were narrowed to the width of a pair of shoulders, so shade holds even through summer afternoons. Water heard over a wall means a fountain in the courtyard. Looking no further than the gateway is the manner here.

A twelve-sided watchtower thrown up in the thirteenth century to guard the river; the gold in its name came not from stored bullion but from lime render that glowed in the sun.

It began as an exchange where merchants haggled, put up to move them off the cathedral steps. It now holds the papers of the New World administration, so the originals stay shut away and only a few sheets lie open in the display room.

Check whether a seat is in sun or shade before you buy. Building began in 1761 and the tiers never came round into a true circle; the shaded side runs near double the price. Fights run from Easter into autumn, the April fair week drawing the most.

The nobleman who built it had been on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, so Mudejar tile runs along the bottom and Renaissance carving brought from Italy sits above. The Roman busts in the courtyard were bought up in Italy in the sixteenth century.

A 17th-century baroque home for elderly priests deep in the Santa Cruz lanes. Its central courtyard sits a step below the arcade, ringed by a band of tiles. It now shows paintings by Velazquez, and murals by the Valdes Leal family cover the chapel.

A mansion of the Dukes of Alba, where the poet Antonio Machado was born in 1875. The lemon-tree patio, Mudejar arches, family paintings and bullfight posters are all left in place. Rooms the duchess lived in are open as if the house were still in use.

A house on Calle Cuna whose early-20th-century countess paved the floors with Roman mosaics taken from Italica. The largest is set mid-patio, and visitors walk around its edge. The upper floor is seen only on a guided tour.

The old Merced convent filled with Seville painters such as Murillo, Zurbaran and Valdes Leal. In the former convent church, Murillo's altarpieces hang much as they did at the altar. On Sunday mornings painters sell their canvases in the square outside.

Palace grounds that Princess Maria Luisa gave the city in 1893, remade for the 1929 exhibition. Tiled benches, fountains and ponds are scattered through the trees. Plaza de America at the south end is thick with pigeons that swarm any open hand holding seed.

The church of the Virgin of Hope, the Macarena, right by the old north wall. The image goes out through the streets from late on Holy Thursday into the dawn of Good Friday. Its treasury shows the procession float and gold-thread mantles up close.

A Roman town founded by Scipio in 206 BC, at Santiponce north-west of Seville. The emperor Trajan came from here, and its great amphitheatre keeps even the tunnels underneath. With almost no shade on site, summer visitors do best to arrive right at opening.

A tree-lined square made in 1574 by draining a marsh. At each end, Roman columns carry statues of Hercules and Caesar. By day it is a playground; after dark the bar terraces round it are packed until late.

Seville's biggest church after the cathedral, raised where a mosque once stood. Gilded baroque altarpieces climb its walls right up to the vaults. One cathedral ticket covers entry here too.