The Most Beautiful Squares, Streets and Monuments in Andalusia
5 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful squares, streets and monuments in Andalusia are Metropol Parasol, Plaza de España and Royal Alcázar of Seville. The list covers 5 squares, streets and monuments. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Andalusia's streets and squares carry the layers of a remarkable history. For nearly eight centuries much of the region was part of al-Andalus, and its Islamic palaces, gardens and whitewashed lanes were absorbed rather than erased after the Christian conquest, giving rise to the Mudéjar style. Long before that, Neolithic communities raised some of the largest megalithic tombs in Europe here, and in the twentieth century Seville used the region's own traditions of brick and tile to build for world exhibitions.
The Royal Alcázar of Seville is the clearest example of that blending: a royal palace whose finest rooms were built for Pedro I in the fourteenth century by craftsmen working in the Islamic manner, surrounded by courtyards and gardens. Nearby, the Plaza de España is a vast semicircle built for the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929, with tiled alcoves dedicated to the provinces of Spain and a canal crossed by bridges.
The Metropol Parasol, completed in 2011 above the Plaza de la Encarnación, adds a contemporary landmark: a huge lattice of timber canopies with a walkway on top. In Córdoba, the Calleja de las Flores is a narrow lane hung with flowerpots that frames the bell tower of the Mezquita-Cathedral. At Antequera, the dolmens of Menga, Viera and El Romeral are monumental stone tombs more than five thousand years old.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Metropol Parasol | Scenic viewpoint | |
| 2 | Plaza de España | Square | |
| 3 | Royal Alcázar of Seville | Palace | ✓ |
| 4 | Antequera Dolmens Site | Archaeological site | ✓ |
| 5 | Calleja de las Flores | Pedestrian street |
01 Metropol Parasol
Spain · 1.7 km from Seville37.393° N 5.992° W
Anual · CC BY-SA 4.0 , who won an international competition held in 2004 against 65 rival entries. Its history is bound up with the square itself. A market hall stood on the Plaza de la Encarnación from the nineteenth century until it was demolished in the mid-twentieth, and the site then lay empty for decades. In 1990 work on a new market and car park uncovered Roman and Moorish remains, halting the project.
Did you know? Work on an earlier car park scheme was halted in the 1990s after some 14 million euros had been spent, once Roman and Moorish ruins appeared.
02 Plaza de España
Spain · 3.2 km from Seville37.377° N 5.987° W
Image by AdamHillTravel from Pixabay The style is Spanish Regionalism at full volume — Renaissance and Baroque revival, neo-Mudéjar brickwork and a touch of the 1920s mixed without apology — but the real subject is Seville's own ceramics.
Did you know? During the Spanish Civil War, rooms in the basement of the building were used as prisons.
03 Royal Alcázar of Seville
Spain · 2.5 km from Seville37.384° N 5.991° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by Danor from Pixabay The site began as a fortress around 913–914, under the Umayyad rulers of al-Andalus. Later Islamic dynasties enlarged it, and the Almohads, who made Seville their capital in the twelfth century, built a whole cluster of palaces here.
Did you know? The courtyard's Renaissance upper storey was added for Charles V between 1540 and 1572, to designs by Luis de Vega.
04 Antequera Dolmens Site
Spain · 35.5 km from Málaga37.023° N 4.548° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by ELG21 from Pixabay The second dolmen, Viera, stands only some 70 metres from Menga: a long, narrow corridor of upright slabs leading to a small square chamber, aligned, like most European dolmens, toward the rising sun. The third monument, the Tholos of El Romeral, belongs to a later age and a different tradition.
Did you know? The Antequera Dolmens Site was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2016.
05 Calleja de las Flores
Spain · 0.8 km from Córdoba37.880° N 4.780° W
Jorge Franganillo · CC BY 4.0 The alley began life as part of an old Cordoban courtyard house, the kind of inward-looking patio the city is known for, and only gradually became a public passage. Local memory credits a neighbour named Felisa with hanging the first flowerpots on the walls in September 1939.
Did you know? The cobbled paving of today replaced plain cement slabs, and a capital from the caliphal period was set at the corner where the lane begins.
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 squares, streets and monuments in Andalusia?
- On our list, Metropol Parasol ranks first, followed by Plaza de España and Royal Alcázar of Seville.
- Why is the Metropol Parasol called Las Setas?
- Las Setas means the mushrooms, a nickname for the shape of its six large timber canopies. Designed by Jürgen Mayer H., it is often described as one of the largest wooden structures in the world.
- Why was the Plaza de España in Seville built?
- It was designed by Aníbal González as the centrepiece of the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929. Its tiled alcoves each represent a Spanish province.
- Which way does the Dolmen of Menga face?
- Unlike most megalithic tombs, which face the sunrise, Menga points towards the Peña de los Enamorados, a nearby mountain shaped like a human profile. This unusual orientation is one reason the Antequera Dolmens became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2016.
- How many squares, streets and monuments are on this list in Andalusia?
- The list covers 5 squares, streets and monuments.