We spent a terrific (but toasty) five days in Seville as we made our way from Ronda to Portugal. Five days was just enough time to get to know the city, see the main sites, and fall a little bit in love with Seville. Plus eat lots of tapas and try the famous regional vino de naranja (orange wine). Here are our main Seville highlights.

Plaza de Espana

Our first outing was an evening walk to the Plaza de Espana. This impressive building and square was built for the Ibero-America Expo held in 1929, which brought together Spain and its former colonies. It’s extremely picturesque and a nice celebration of Spanish heritage. We learned more about it a few days later when we did an audio tour of Seville, but our first visit we just took in the grandeur.

Audio Tour and Real Alcázar

With the heat, the best time to go out was in the early morning so we combined the first part of the audio tour I bought on the Voice Map app with our visit to the Royal Alcazar, a 14th century palace built in the Moorish-style for a Christian king. I pre-purchased tickets to the Alcazar online for the first entry. The audio tour was very well done, sharing about the early architecture and history of Seville.

The palace itself was incredibly photogenic, especially the extensive gardens, which included fountains, a hedge maze and peacocks. 

After the palace, we had a little time to spend before the restaurants opened at noon for lunch, so we found a cafe then headed to Taberna Álvaro Peregil, a place I’d seen recommended for its tapas including traditional Sevillian chickpea and spinach and also orange wine (of course). But, it didn’t open quite on time, so we had our first round of tapas at the next-door restaurant, Casa Tomate, which turned out to be excellent. And we were able to see when Peregil opened so we were able to snag a table, which filled very quickly. 

After lunch we walked around a bit more and briefly checked out the iconic Setas de Seville (more on that below). We visited one more bar before heading home, which was a great experience because it had a very local feel and they served an interesting bean salad as their free tapa with our beers. It made for a very fun day exploring Seville.

Setas de Sevilla

After seeing the Setas de Sevilla structure, we knew we wanted to go up in it, but realized the heat of the day was not the time. Luckily they offer evening visits too, so back at the apartment we booked tickets for 10 p.m. the next night when we knew it would be dark. We went out after dinner and enjoyed a small beer at the base of the structure before going up. It was really cool (visually; even at 10 p.m., Seville was still pretty warm) with its lights and paths and wooden beams and had great views of the city. There’s a slight premium on the ticket to visit at night (10 euros vs 5 euros) but it was definitely worth going after dark in the summertime.

Cathedral

Our last visit the afternoon before we departed was to the Catedral de Sevilla, which is one of the largest in the world. It was very impressive and contained lots of interesting art, including the tomb of Christopher Columbus. I bought an audio guide with our tickets to help give us the context for the art and architecture of the cathedral. It was very impressive and climbing the tower also offered a great view of the city. 

Summary

We really enjoyed our brief time in Seville. It is a gorgeous European city and easy to see why so many people make it a destination in Spain. It was a great close to our seven weeks in Spain and made us eager to see more of Spain in the future.

Seville Airbnb Review – Wonderful apartment in Triana. It was easy to walk to all the Seville attractions we wanted to see. The central ac worked very well. Great communication from hosts. We were grateful to be allowed to check in an hour early and check out an hour late. Strong wifi and well-equipped kitchen. Very comfortable space overall. We’d definitely choose this apartment again. https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/42202393