Seville

Seville is a big city in the south of Spain. A wide river flows through it.

Seville has very old buildings, a palace with gardens and a tall tower.

Seville is the capital of Andalusia, the region that covers the south of Spain. It stands on the Guadalquivir River. Universalis says the city is about 120 kilometers from the Atlantic Ocean, yet its history has always been closely tied to the sea, and ships sailed up the river to it.

Spain's population register counted 688,714 people in Seville on 1 January 2025. Only Madrid, Barcelona, València and Zaragoza had more.

City Population's table of Spain's National Statistics Institute (INE) figures gives Seville 688,714 people in the register evaluation of 1 January 2025, up from 684,340 in the census of 1 January 2021. Andalusia, whose capital it is, had 8,676,713.

Universalis calls Seville the political capital of Andalusia and an important cultural and economic center in Spain's history, on the left bank of the Guadalquivir about 120 km from the Atlantic.

Seville has a huge old cathedral with a tall tower called the Giralda.

Next to it is the Alcázar, a palace with big gardens.

In 1987 UNESCO listed three buildings side by side in the center of Seville. The cathedral, begun in the early 1400s on the site of a mosque, has five naves, and UNESCO calls it the largest Gothic building in Europe. Its bell tower, the Giralda, was built in 1184–1198 as the mosque's minaret.

The Alcázar is a group of palace buildings and large gardens, built and rebuilt from the Middle Ages to modern times. The Archivo de Indias was built in 1585 as a meeting house for merchants and became an archive in 1785.

UNESCO's synthesis dates the cathedral to 1403 (Universalis says work began in 1402) and notes that the Giralda's top section was designed in the Renaissance by Hernán Ruiz. The Alcázar's original core was built in the 10th century as the governor's palace; UNESCO says it is still used as the Spanish royal family's residence in the city, and its Palacio de Pedro I is an example of Mudéjar art.

The Archivo de Indias, designed by Juan de Herrera, housed the merchants' Casa Lonja from 1585 and became the Archivo General de Indias in 1785. UNESCO calls it home to the greatest collection of documents on Spain's relations with the Americas.

Long ago, ships carried olive oil from Seville to faraway places.

Today Seville is the capital of Andalusia. Many visitors come to see its old buildings.

Universalis describes Seville as a rich city of art and trade. Ships came up the Guadalquivir to a city known for its fine crafts. After 1503, Spain's trade with the Americas was controlled from an office in Seville.

When Spain lost its central place in world trade, Seville stopped growing for a long time. Universalis says it found new industry in the 1800s and became a center of government and tourism in the 1900s.

Universalis says political and economic conditions made Seville a rich city of art, and that it twice served as a capital: for the Almohad dynasty's Iberian lands, then as a favorite residence of the kings of Castile and León. The 1503 decision to place the Casa de Contratación there made it the gateway to Spanish America.

When Spain lost its central place in world trade, the encyclopedia says Seville and its region had no resources of their own to resist the general decline, and the city stagnated before regaining some industrial activity in the 19th century, then administrative and tourist activity in the 20th.