The Most Beautiful Places in Seville
7 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Seville are Torre del Oro, Giralda and Metropol Parasol. The list covers 7 places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Seville grew on the Guadalquivir, the one great navigable river of southern Spain. Under the Almohads it was a capital of Muslim al-Andalus, after 1248 a city of the Castilian kings, and in the sixteenth century it held the royal monopoly on trade with the Americas, the wealth of which paid for its churches and palaces. The result is a city where Islamic, Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque work stand on top of one another, often in the same building.
The cathedral, built on the site of the great mosque, is the largest Gothic cathedral in the world and holds the tomb of Christopher Columbus. Its bell tower, the Giralda, began as the mosque's Almohad minaret, with a Renaissance belfry added on top. Next door, the Royal Alcázar was rebuilt by Pedro I in Mudéjar style, with carved stucco, tiled courtyards and gardens, and it is still a royal residence. On the river, the twelve-sided Torre del Oro was built as an Almohad watchtower guarding the harbour.
Later centuries added their own showpieces. The Baroque Plaza de toros de la Real Maestranza is one of the oldest bullrings in Spain. The Plaza de España, built for the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929, curves around a canal with tiled alcoves for each Spanish province. The Metropol Parasol, a lattice of timber canopies over the Plaza de la Encarnación, carries a walkway above the old town's rooftops.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Torre del Oro | Watchtower | |
| 2 | Giralda | Bell tower | ✓ |
| 3 | Metropol Parasol | Scenic viewpoint | |
| 4 | Seville Cathedral | Cathedral | ✓ |
| 5 | Plaza de España | Square | |
| 6 | Royal Alcázar of Seville | Palace | ✓ |
| 7 | Plaza de toros de la Real Maestranza, Seville | Amphitheatre |
01 Torre del Oro
Spain · 2.9 km from Seville37.382° N 5.996° W
Fedoce1 (Fernando Domínguez Cerejido) · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Torre del Oro, the Tower of Gold, has watched over the Guadalquivir in Seville for eight centuries.
Did you know? In 1822 it housed the offices of the port captaincy, and from 1870 the Spanish Navy held the right to use the building.
02 Giralda
Spain · 2.4 km from Seville37.386° N 5.992° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
Francisco Anzola from United States · CC BY 2.0 The Giralda, the bell tower of Seville Cathedral, is two buildings in one.
Did you know? Excavations in the 1990s found seven Roman altars reused in the tower's foundations, one dedicated to a 2nd-century olive-oil trader.
03 Metropol Parasol
Spain · 1.7 km from Seville37.393° N 5.992° W
Anual · CC BY-SA 4.0 Metropol Parasol, known to everyone in Seville as Las Setas, "the mushrooms", is a giant canopy of timber latticework spread over the Plaza de la Encarnación in the old town.
Did you know? In 2010, with the building about 80 per cent complete, a mayoral candidate proposed scrapping the timber roof and four of the six parasols to save money.
04 Seville Cathedral
Catedral de Santa María de la Sede de Sevilla
Spain · 2.4 km from Seville37.386° N 5.993° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by JaimePF55 from Pixabay When Seville's cathedral chapter decided in July 1401 to replace the old mosque that had served as their church, they wanted a building with no equal. A later tradition gives them a bolder line: let us build a church so large that people will think us mad.
Did you know? The Almohad mosque it replaced covered more than 15,000 square metres, with a prayer hall divided into 17 aisles.
05 Plaza de España
Spain · 3.2 km from Seville37.377° N 5.987° W
Image by AdamHillTravel from Pixabay Seville built the Plaza de España to impress the Spanish-speaking world, and a century later it still does. It was the showpiece of the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929, laid out on the edge of the María Luisa Park by the Sevillian architect Aníbal González, who began work in 1914.
Did you know? Seville itself has no bench of its own among the 48 provincial alcoves, which are arranged in four sections of twelve.
06 Royal Alcázar of Seville
Spain · 2.5 km from Seville37.384° N 5.991° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by Danor from Pixabay The Royal Alcázar of Seville is a palace built as a sequence of courtyards, each opening into the next: arcades carved with lace-like plaster, tiled walls, pools and channels of water, and beyond them a maze of gardens full of orange trees and palms.
Did you know? According to an apocryphal story, the Courtyard of the Maidens recalls a tribute of 100 virgins supposedly demanded each year by Muslim rulers.
07 Plaza de toros de la Real Maestranza, Seville
Plaza de toros de la Real Maestranza
Spain · 2.7 km from Seville37.386° N 5.998° W
José Luiz · CC BY-SA 3.0 The bullring of the Real Maestranza de Caballería in Seville is one of the handsomest buildings of its kind anywhere, and one of the oldest.
Did you know? The Real Maestranza was granted its royal title by King Philip V in 1730, and the royal box was later built for a prince named its senior brother.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful places in Seville?
- On our list, Torre del Oro ranks first, followed by Giralda and Metropol Parasol.
- What was the Giralda originally?
- The Giralda was built in the twelfth century as the minaret of Seville's Almohad great mosque. After the Christian conquest it became the cathedral's bell tower, and a Renaissance belfry was added in the sixteenth century.
- Why was the Plaza de España in Seville built?
- It was built as the centrepiece of the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929, designed by Aníbal González, with tiled alcoves representing the provinces of Spain.
- Is Christopher Columbus buried in Seville Cathedral?
- The cathedral holds his monumental tomb, carried by four figures representing the kingdoms of Castile, León, Aragon and Navarre.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Seville?
- In our collection, the places in Seville are most often churches (1), cathedrals (1), bell towers (1) and castles (1).
- How many places are on this list in Seville?
- The list covers 7 places.