🇪🇸 Spain
Seville
Seville (Sevilla — the capital of Andalusia and the fourth largest city in Spain, population 700,000 in the city, 1.5 million in the metropolitan area) is arguably the most beautiful city in Spain and one of the most visually arresting in all of Europe: the Barrio de Santa Cruz (the medieval Jewish quarter, a labyrinth of white-washed alleys with flower-draped iron grilles and the smell of orange blossom), the Alcázar (the royal palace that began as a Moorish fort in 913 AD and was continuously expanded through Moorish, Mudejar, Gothic and Renaissance styles over 1,000 years — the oldest royal palace still in use in Europe), the Catedral de Sevilla (the largest Gothic cathedral in the world and the third largest church of any kind after St Peter's and St Paul's — containing the tomb of Christopher Columbus, whose remains rest in the four-figure bronze coffin carried by the kings of Castile, León, Aragon and Navarre). Seville is the birthplace of flamenco (the most expressive and technically demanding of all European music and dance traditions, born from the fusion of Moorish, Jewish and Romani cultures in 15th-century Andalusia), the setting of more operas than any other city in the world (Carmen, The Barber of Seville, Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro and Fidelio are all set in Seville), and the city where Ferdinand and Isabella sent Christopher Columbus on his first voyage in 1492.