Tag Archives: XX

ROYAL AUDIENCE OF SEVILLE

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The Royal Court was the highest judicial institution in the city and settled in this space since the beginning of the 16th century, when it moved from its previous headquarters in the Casa de Pilatos. The current building would be built in the Renaissance style at the end of the same century by order of Felipe II.

However, the building that we can see today is far from the original, due to the numerous historical vicissitudes it has gone through.

In 1918 there was a great fire that destroyed it to a large extent and forced the transfer of the courts to Almirante Apocada street, to the place where the General Archive of Andalusia is located today.

After the fire, Aníbal González was in charge of remodeling the property, giving it its current appearance. In the 1970s it underwent another important transformation with the aim of making it the headquarters of the old Caja de San Fernando. Today it houses the headquarters of the CajaSol Foundation.

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WALL OF THE PASEO CATALINA DE RIBERA (CONTEMPORARY)

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As part of the urban redevelopment works in this sector of the city, undertaken at the beginning of the 20th century, this wall or fence was built to separate the gardens of the Alcázar from the Paseo de Catalina de Ribera and the Jardines de Murillo. It is almost 400 meters long and is made in the historicist style that was so popular at the time. In fact, it is a crenellated wall, despite the fact that it does not have any defensive purpose.

Also historicist and with a certain monumentality are the two portals that are located at both ends of the Paseo, which today serve as auxiliary accesses to the gardens of the Alcázar.

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ALLEGORIES OF IBERIA, THE GUADALQUIVIR RIVER AND THE MAGDALENA RIVER

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In a small meadow inside the Garden of Earthly Delights we find these three allegorical sculptures made around 1928. They were originally made as part of a large monumental fountain that was located in what was called Plaza de los Conquistadores, in the southern sector of the city. Ibero-American Exhibition of 1929. This space was redeveloped after the Exhibition, the square and the fountain disappearing, and it is currently occupied by part of the Reina Mercedes university campus.

The allegory of Iberia occupied the central space of the fountain. It was made by the Valencian Francisco Marco Díaz-Pintado, who conceived Iberia as a female figure carved in stone about 3.5 m high. With an attitude between hieratic and solemn, she appears dressed in a wide tunic and a headdress and some jewels of clear Iberian inspiration. She seems to be directly inspired by Iberian sculptures, especially the Ladies of Elche and Baza. With her left arm she holds a large garland of flowers and fruit, symbolizing the agrarian wealth of the Peninsula.

On both sides of Iberia were the allegories of the Guadalquivir and Magdalena rivers, which today are also found in this area of the Garden of Earthly Delights. Both rivers are represented as two men, who appear naked and reclining, each showing some element that allows them to be identified.

The Allegory of the Guadalquivir River was made by Agustín Sánchez Cid and next to him we see a bull's head and a cornucopia. For its part, the Allegory of the Magdalena River is the work of José Lafita Díaz. She rests on a small alligator, a very abundant animal in this Colombian river, and we can also see various American fruits, such as pineapples.

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