Seville; Tuesday, 11 March, 2008

With a repeat of the Phantom Driller and a decent breakfast I headed out of the hotel and back to the river and the Torre del Oro. Originally this had been the final defensive tower on the old Moorish walls, guarding the city and the river than ran past it. Today it is the city’s maritime museum and as it was a Tuesday it was both open and free. Sadly it was also full of noisey, uncontrolled and quite obviously bored French school kids.

I took advantage of the audio guide and a seat to get most of the details of the buildings history and the museum without having to worry about the school kids getting in my way, and after most of them had dispersed had a wander around the building looking at the exhibits.

From the Torre del Oro it was a short walk up to the Royal Palace, the Real Alcázar, where once again there was a group (though a different one this time) of French school kids. Thankfully they were in the group queue so I sidled in through the individual visitors entrance and started looking around the palace. It is a simply spectacular building. Taking lots of its influences from the Moors it combines the beauty of Islamic architecture with the wealth of a nation that controlled most of the worlds gold for many years. If the building is spectacular then you start to run out of superlatives when you reach the gardens, which complement the palace perfectly.

After spending quite a lot of time looking around the palace and gardens I headed over to the Parque Maria Luisa for a late lunch and then, once they had opened into the two museums here. First stop was the Museo de Artes y Costumbres Populares de Sevilla or the museum of arts and traditions, Seville and after looking around that it was across the square to the Archaeological museum.

The Archaeological museum goes a long way to showing the important Roman history of the region. Just 9KM from modern day Seville is Itálica. This was once the third most important city in the Roman empire after Alexandria and Rome. It was the birth place of Emperors Hadrian and Trajan and was my next stop.

From outside the Archaeological museum I caught the bus up round to the bus station at Plaza de Armas and from there the regional bus out to the town of Santiponce. The bus continues all the way to the archaeological site at Itálica, but I got off in the centre of Santiponce so that I could have a wander around some of the other remains that are scattered through the town. The main one being the Theatre. Sadly access to the theatre was closed for the day, but you can still access a view point above it to look down on what are fairly substantial ruins. From there it was a short walk on to the main site.

As you enter the site at Itálica the first thing that you are met by should be the substantial remains of the Amphitheatre. Sadly, the main thing I was struck by was groups three and four of French school kids, I couldn’t work out where they were all coming from! After getting into the site the kids were heading for the Amphitheatre, so I headed for the remains of the houses, and had most of the site to myself. A signed walk takes you around most of the main areas of the site, though not that much has been excavated. After about an hours walking, in a very hot sun (Itálica is not recommended in the height of summer!) I had completed most of the site, and was starting to burn, so I was happy to have reached the cool shade of the Amphitheatre. Whilst it is not as impressive as the Colosseum in Rome, it is still a pretty spectacular piece of building work, especially given that it has withstood over 2000 years.

Having walked around the site, and the Amphitheatre I got back to the main entrance just as the gates were being locked, thankfully with no sign of any school kids. As I had over 20 minutes until the bus I had a wander back up towards the town centre. In the end I wish I hadn’t as by the time the bus arrived it had managed to locate one of the groups of school kids and was absolutely packed to capacity. I only just managed to get on and had a quite uncomfortable 25 minute journey back into Seville.

Having arrived back in the city centre I caught the bus round to the hotel to drop off my stuff (and apply a bit of after sun) before heading back out into town for my final dinner of the trip.