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Alcazar
by Josephine Quintero
It's easy to be fooled into thinking this is a Moorish
palace, some of the rooms and courtyards seem to come straight from
the Alhambra. Most of them were actually built - by Moorish workmen
it's true - for King Pedro the Cruel of Castile in the 1360's who,
with his mistress Maria de Padilla, lived in and ruled from the
Alcazar. Pedro embarked upon a complete rebuilding of the palace,
employing workmen from Granada and utilising fragments of earlier
Moorish buildings in Seville, Cordoba and Valencia.
Pedro's work forms the nucleus of the Alcazar as
it is today and, despite numerous restorations necessitated by fires
and earth tremors, it offers some of the best surviving examples
of Mudejar architecture.
Later monarchs, however, have left all too many
traces and additions - the most mundane of which are probably the
kitchens constructed for General Franco who stayed in the royal
apartments whenever he visited Seville.
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