Seville was Roman Hispalis, Islamic Ishbiliya, then the sole legal port for all Spanish trade with the Americas. Three days trace that arc: Italica's mosaics, Almohad brickwork, Mudéjar palaces, the Indies archives and the Inquisition's own castle.
Founded 206 BC after the Battle of Ilipa, birthplace of emperors Trajan and Hadrian. The amphitheatre held 25,000 — third largest in the Empire. Tue–Sat 09:00–18:00 (summer 09:00–15:00), Sun to 15:00, closed Mon. Bus M-172 from Plaza de Armas.
The 1184–1198 Almohad minaret of Seville's great mosque, topped with a Renaissance belfry in 1568. Inside are 35 ramps, built so the muezzin could ride up on horseback. The orange-tree courtyard and Puerta del Perdón are the mosque's only other survivors.
Housed in Aníbal González's 1929 Renaissance-revival pavilion. The star is the Carambolo Treasure — 21 pieces of Tartessian gold from c. 7th century BC found in 1958 in Camas, plus Roman statuary lifted straight from Italica.
Under the wooden 'Setas' lies a 5,000 m² excavation exposed during a 1990s car-park dig: Roman houses from the 1st to 6th centuries AD with intact mosaics, a salting factory, and an Almohad-era dwelling stacked directly above them.
Juan de Herrera's 1585 merchants' exchange, converted in 1785 to hold every document of Spain's American empire: 43,000 bundles on 8 km of shelving, including Columbus's journal fragments and Magellan's charts. Free entry, Tue–Sat 09:30–17:00.
An Almohad watchtower of 1220–1221, once anchoring a chain across the Guadalquivir to block enemy ships. From 1503 it guarded bullion arriving from the Indies. The 12-sided tower now holds a naval museum over three floors.
Beneath the Triana market lie the excavated cells of the Spanish Inquisition's first permanent seat, active 1481–1785. The free interpretation centre reconstructs trials and names the condemned; Magellan's 1519 crew mustered on the quay outside.
Aníbal González's semicircle for the 1929 Ibero-American Exposition, 50,000 m² of brick, marble and azulejo. Forty-eight tiled alcoves depict a historical scene for each Spanish province, arranged alphabetically from Álava to Zaragoza.
Begun 1483 for the Enríquez de Ribera family and finished after Fadrique's 1519 pilgrimage to Jerusalem — hence the name. Mudéjar plasterwork meets Italian Renaissance marble, plus 24 Roman busts collected in 16th-century Italy.
After Ferdinand III's 1248 conquest, Jews were settled here behind their own wall; the 1391 pogrom emptied it. Calle Susona bears a tile of a skull, marking the Jewish woman who betrayed her father's conspiracy and asked for her head to hang there.
A 1675 retirement home for elderly priests, built around a sunken patio designed to keep water at well level. Valdés Leal frescoed the church; the Focus-Abengoa collection upstairs holds Velázquez's 'Santa Rufina', painted in his native city.
Carthusian monastery from 1400 where Columbus lodged, planned his second voyage and lay buried for 27 years. Seized in 1836, it became Pickman's ceramics factory — the bottle kilns still stand inside the cloisters, an industrial layer over a Gothic one.