Seville for families

Must-see attractions

Seville's must-see list is not a parade of postcards; it is a city that built monumentally and then kept living inside its monuments. The cathedral is still a working Catholic cathedral, formerly a mosque; the royal palace next door is still a royal palace; the bullring still hosts a season; the opera house still raises its curtain. What makes Seville's headline sights notable is how tightly they cluster — the cathedral at 37.3857, -5.9931 and the Reales Alcázares at 37.3844, -5.9912 share a square, the Giralda rises from the cathedral roofline at 37.3861, -5.9924, and the Torre del Oro stands a short walk down to the river at 37.3825, -5.9963. This list is for the visitor who would rather see four buildings honestly than twelve in a hurry: the Moorish-Christian hinges of the old centre, two palaces still in private foundation hands, the Roman city the Romans left behind in Santiponce, and the working stages — bullring, opera house, open-air arena — where the city still performs to itself.