Surely you have heard many times the expression ¨give a cheer¨ which in Spanish it would be ¨dar vítores¨, but you wouldn’t think that the cheers (vítores) can also be written, for example on the walls of the Cathedral of Seville. It turns out that they are those reddish graffiti that form anagrams with the letters of victor, that is the result of what some of the recently doctorates scribbled in the monument so the whole city would learn of their academic triumphs. Hooliganism in full! What a pity…
read more
Surely you have heard many times the expression ¨give a cheer¨ which in Spanish it would be ¨dar vítores¨, but you wouldn’t think that the cheers (vítores) can also be written, for example on the walls of the Cathedral of Seville. It turns out that they are those reddish graffiti that form anagrams with the letters of victor, that is the result of what some of the recently doctorates scribbled in the monument so the whole city would learn of their academic triumphs. Hooliganism in full! What a pity…
Without a doubt one of the largest cathedrals in the world deserves respect, and the more we learn about its history, the more respect it deserves. You are facing a tremendous Christian work that occupies the place of what once was a great Muslim work, a mosque that must have been impressive for its size, its courtyard and its horseshoe arches everywhere.
The Christians who conquered the city in 1248 must have liked that mosque very much, however infidel it was, so instead of tearing it down and starting to make a new one in the form of a cross, they made the wise decision to keep it as it was, and consecrate it to use it as a cathedral. So, one hundred and fifty years passed by in which they didn’t even change the spheres that topped the bell tower, that is, the Giralda.
By the way, it is quite striking this thing about the spheres, because they were placed on the top of the tower in honour of an Arab victory over King Alfonso VII. They were cover in gold, and they were so big and shiny that, they say, they could be seen a day away. So proud of the tower were its builders that, when the city was being taken over by Ferdinand III, they asked to be allowed to knock it down, so they didn’t have to see it in the hands of the enemy. To our luck, the owners of the city didn’t let them and there remained for centuries the highest tower in Spain.
Around 1356 an earthquake severely affected the entire building. They began to think then that maybe the use of a Muslim mosque as a Christian temple could bring bad luck, and with the excuse of the damage caused by the earthquake they started a project to build a new cathedral which, with one thing and another, its construction didn’t begin until 1434 and took 72 years to complete. But do not think that bad luck had left this building, because 4 years later, due to the weight of the structure, some of the interiors collapsed. A new structure was designed… which collapsed 370 years later. So the dome we can see today, it’s the third one. Fingers crossed…
It really took a lot of work for this cathedral to stop looking like a mosque.
