Giralda

Stand still for a moment at the foot of the tower and tilt your head back. The brick in front of you is warm and rosy, the colour of baked earth. Above it, the stone grows paler as it climbs, until a small bronze figure turns in the wind at the very top. Around you, horse hooves click on the paving stones, church bells mark the hour, and somewhere a waiter calls out an order. This is the Giralda, the bell tower of Seville Cathedral.

But this tower did not begin its life as a Christian bell tower. It began as a minaret, the tower from which a crier called Muslims to prayer. In the late twelfth century, Seville was ruled by the Almohads, a Berber dynasty from North Africa. They built a great mosque on this spot, and they gave it a tall, square minaret. Work on the tower began in 1184 and finished in 1198. Most of what you see below the bells today comes from that time.

Look closely at the brick faces of the lower tower. You will see panels of interlocking arches that form a kind of diamond lattice. This pattern is called sebka, a decorative net of brick that was popular in Almohad architecture. It covers large flat walls without making them heavy. Between the panels, small windows with horseshoe and lobed arches let light into the interior. The design follows strict geometry, and yet the surface feels soft, almost like woven fabric when the sun moves across it.

The Giralda has two famous relatives across the sea. The Koutoubia minaret in Marrakesh and the Hassan Tower in Rabat were built by the same Almohad dynasty in the same era. If you have visited Morocco, the family resemblance may feel familiar — the square plan, the brick, the latticed panels. Together these three towers mark the reach of one empire. That empire ruled on both sides of the Strait of Gibraltar.

Here is a detail that many visitors miss. Some of the stones at the very base of the tower are much older than the Almohads. The builders reused blocks from Roman and later structures in the foundations. A few of these stones still carry carved Latin lettering, set sideways or upside down. Walk around the base slowly, and look low. Seville was a Roman city long before it was an Islamic one, and the tower literally stands on that earlier past.

In 1248, Christian forces under King Ferdinand the Third of Castile took Seville. The new rulers converted the great mosque into a cathedral, and for a long time they kept using the old building. The minaret became a bell tower. In the fifteenth century, they finally tore down the mosque to build the vast Gothic cathedral beside you. Yet they kept the tower. They admired it too much to destroy it, and its height made it useful for bells.

The original minaret had a different crown. Accounts describe a set of large metal spheres, gilded so that they shone in the sun and could be seen from far away. An earthquake in the fourteenth century brought them down. For about two centuries, the top of the tower stayed plain. Then, in the sixteenth century, the architect Hernán Ruiz the Younger added the Renaissance belfry you see today. This upper section is lighter in colour, with balconies, columns and open arches for the bells.

That contrast is the heart of the Giralda. Your eye can trace the exact line where one civilisation ends and another begins. Below, the Islamic brickwork is calm and geometric. Above, the Christian belfry is busier, with classical columns and carved details. Around the belfry runs a Latin inscription from the Book of Proverbs. It reads Turris Fortissima Nomen Domini, which means "the name of the Lord is the strongest tower." The two styles sit on top of each other, and somehow they work as one tower.

At the very top stands the Giraldillo, a bronze statue of a woman holding a shield and a palm branch. She represents Faith. She is also a weathervane, so she turns with the wind. The Spanish verb girar means to turn, and the name of the whole tower comes from this small turning figure. Over the centuries, the statue needed repair and restoration. Today a faithful replica also stands at ground level near the cathedral, so you can see her face up close.

Now for the second surprise. If you climb the Giralda, you will not climb stairs. Inside the tower, a long series of sloping ramps winds upward around a central core. The ramps are wide and gentle. Tradition says they were built so that the muezzin, the man who called the faithful to prayer, could ride up on horseback. Whether anyone really rode a horse to the top is hard to prove. But the climb is surprisingly easy, and many children manage it with no trouble.

At the top, the view opens in every direction. Below you lie the roofs and flying buttresses of the cathedral, one of the largest Gothic churches in the world. To one side, you can see the walls and gardens of the Real Alcázar, the royal palace. Beyond them, the white and ochre rooftops of the old city spread toward the river. The Giralda, the cathedral and the Alcázar, together with the nearby Archive of the Indies, became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987.

Back on the ground, another piece of the old mosque survives. Inside the cathedral complex lies the Courtyard of the Orange Trees, the Patio de los Naranjos. This was once the courtyard where worshippers washed before prayer. The neat rows of orange trees and the narrow water channels still follow that old pattern. In spring, the blossom fills the air with a sweet, heavy scent. Seville is full of these bitter oranges, and much of the fruit ends up in British marmalade.

As you walk away, turn around one more time. Notice how the tower appears at the end of narrow streets, framed between balconies and laundry lines. For more than eight centuries, people in Seville have used it to find their way home. Watch the light change on the brick, from pale gold at midday to deep copper at sunset. And look up at the small bronze figure at the top. She is still turning, still facing the wind, above the square where you stand.