Seville Cathedral

Overview

Seville Cathedral is the largest Gothic cathedral in the world, built between 1401 and 1519 on the footprint of the Almohad Friday mosque it replaced. Five naves, 80 chapels and a bell tower that spent its first 50 years as a minaret sit inside one block of Seville’s old town, and the UNESCO citation calls the church the largest Gothic building in Europe.

Three things justify the ticket even if church interiors normally bore you. The Retablo Mayor behind the high altar is a wall of carved and gilded wood about 30 metres high and 20 wide, reckoned the largest altarpiece in Christendom, with 44 relief panels and more than 200 figures of saints. The Royal Chapel at the east end holds Ferdinand III, who took the city in 1248, his son Alfonso X and their descendant Pedro I. Christopher Columbus and his son Diego are buried here too. And the Patio de los Naranjos, the mosque’s old ablutions courtyard, still runs water through channels between the orange trees.

One ticket covers the cathedral, the Giralda and free entry to the Iglesia de El Salvador a few streets north, which almost nobody notices on the way in. The tower has its own timed access control, and its own page here.

History

The oldest things in the building are a handful of Visigothic column capitals in the Capilla de la Granada, the last remains of the church that stood here before the Arab conquest of 712.

Caliph Abu Yaqub Yusuf ordered a new congregational mosque for Seville in 1172. Ahmad ben Basso designed a rectangle of 113 by 135 metres with a prayer hall of seventeen aisles; it opened for worship in 1182 and was finished in 1198. The minaret went up from 1184 and was topped out on 10 March 1198 with four gilded bronze spheres, which came down in an earthquake in 1365. Ferdinand III took Seville in 1248 and the mosque became the cathedral without being rebuilt: the orientation was turned, and walls were run between the bays along the north and south sides to make chapels.

On 8 July 1401 the chapter decided to demolish it and start again. The surviving minute proposes building “una tal y tan buena, que no haya otra su igual”, one so good that none will be its equal. Work began in 1402 at the northeast corner and ran for more than a century, paid for in large part by the cathedral clergy, who gave up half their stipends to keep masons and glaziers on site.

The crossing lantern was finished around 1506 and collapsed in 1511, taking some of the vaults with it. Juan Gil de Hontanon the Elder designed the replacement in 1513, and it was done by 1519. That is usually given as the completion date, though the building never really stopped: the altarpiece gained two extra outer bays from 1550 and was finished in 1564, and the money kept arriving as Seville grew rich on American trade.

The Renaissance work is the second layer you will notice. Martin de Gainza began the Capilla Real at the head of the church in 1551, replacing the Gothic apse; when he died in 1556 only the dome was missing, and Hernan Ruiz II closed it around 1568. The same architect gave the Giralda its Renaissance belfry, crowned in 1568 by the four metre bronze weathervane called El Giraldillo. The elliptical chapter house was completed by Asensio de Maeda in 1593, and Murillo delivered its ceiling canvases after a commission in 1667.

Later centuries mostly repaired damage. The lantern over the Royal Chapel fell in 1754 and was rebuilt by Sebastian van der Borch, who also designed the chapel’s iron screen, paid for by Carlos III and installed in 1771. An earthquake brought the main crossing down again in 1888 and destroyed everything underneath it, including both historic organs; the twin instruments you see now were built by Aquilino Amezua between 1901 and 1903, converted to electric action in 1973 and reworked by Gerhard Grenzing in 1996.

Visiting

Where you go in depends on how you bought the ticket. Online tickets enter by the Puerta del Lagarto on the north side; ticket office tickets enter by the Puerta del Principe. Everyone leaves by the Puerta del Perdon, the old mosque gateway on Calle Alemanes that kept its pointed horseshoe arch.

General admission is €13 online and €14 at the window, with a reduced €7 online or €8 at the window for over-65s, students up to 25, people with a disability of 33 to 65 per cent, and adults in a large family. Opening is 11:00 to 18:00 Monday to Saturday and 14:30 to 19:00 on Sunday, but entry and the Giralda both shut at 17:00, so the last hour or two is for people already inside. July and August run 09:30 to 18:00 Monday to Saturday and 12:30 to 19:00 on Sunday. The cathedral puts the general visit at 75 minutes, and the time printed on your ticket is your entry slot, not a limit on how long you stay.

The route starts with the Giralda, which has a separate access control and its own capacity cap. It is ramps rather than stairs, wide enough that the climb was originally done on horseback, which makes it easier than it looks and impossible for anyone using a wheelchair.

Down again, the Patio de los Naranjos is the calmest space in the complex and the clearest surviving piece of the mosque. Two of its three original galleries remain, on pillars carrying pointed horseshoe arches; the third was demolished to build the Sagrario church. The fountain in the middle is modern except for its upper basin, which is Visigothic and was the basin Seville’s Muslims used for ablutions before prayer.

Inside, the two set pieces face each other across the crossing. The Retablo Mayor fills the wall behind the high altar, four tiers and seven vertical bays of gilded scenes with a 14th century Calvary on top; the crucifix there is known as the Cristo del Millon, and a Gothic Virgen de la Sede sits at the centre of the base. Opposite it, the walled choir blocks any clear view down the nave, so you have to walk around it.

Columbus’s tomb is inside the church, the coffin held up on the shoulders of four heralds standing for Castile, Leon, Aragon and Navarre. The Royal Chapel at the far east end is a separate square room under a coffered dome: the Virgen de los Reyes, a 13th century French Gothic figure, presides under a silver canopy, Alfonso X and his mother Beatrice of Swabia lie in niches in the side walls, and stairs beside the altar drop into the crypt where Pedro I and Maria de Padilla are buried.

Two rooms most visitors walk past deserve five minutes each. The chapter house is elliptical, built for the canons to see and hear each other, and the acoustics still work; Murillo’s Inmaculada crowns the vault above eight round canvases of Sevillian saints. And the baptistery chapel holds Murillo’s Vision of Saint Anthony, the painting that was cut apart in 1874 and repaired a year later.

On the way out, look up in the Nave del Lagarto for the stuffed crocodile that gives the gate its name. The shop is in the same nave off the Patio de los Naranjos, open 11:00 to 18:00 Monday to Saturday and 14:30 to 18:00 on Sunday.

Tips

• Buy online. It is €13 instead of €14, and online tickets use a different door, the Puerta del Lagarto, rather than the Puerta del Principe queue at the ticket office.

• The free Sunday visit runs 16:30 to 18:00, excludes public holidays, needs an online reservation in advance and has a capped capacity.

• Watch the 17:00 cut-off rather than the closing time. On Sundays the doors say 19:00 but access and the tower close at 17:00, which catches out anyone who plans a late afternoon visit.

• July is the quietest month and October the busiest. In 2025 the cathedral counted 141,563 visits in July against 271,488 in October, so the hot month you were warned off is the one with the shortest queues.

• July and August also open at 09:30 instead of 11:00, and that first hour is the coolest and emptiest part of the day.

• Bring proof if you qualify for a discount. Reduced entry is €7 online for over-65s, students up to 25, disability of 33 to 65 per cent and large-family adults; entry is free for people born or resident in the Seville diocese, under-13s with an adult, disability from 65 per cent and the registered unemployed, all on production of an official document.

• Audio guide is €5 for a handset and €4 in the app version, so download it before you arrive if you want it.

• Ask at the information point for the free plan of the cathedral. There are also free leaflets in nine languages including Japanese, Chinese and Korean, and a separate children’s version.

• Photography is allowed without flash and without a tripod, provided you do not disturb anyone praying. Tourist visiting stops during services, food is banned throughout and only water counts as an acceptable drink.

• Dress decorously and take your hat off at the door. Dogs are refused except guide dogs, and smoking is banned across the whole site.

• Published hours move for worship and for the big feasts. The cathedral warns that they can change without notice when Pastoral and Culto need the building, so check the agenda on the official site the day before.

• Pair it with the Real Alcázar rather than with a third monument. UNESCO listed the two together with the Archivo de Indias in 1987 because they stand side by side, and 75 minutes here plus the palace and gardens is a full morning.