Royal Palaces of Spain

by Albert Frederick Calvert

Passing through the colonnaded Apeadero, built by Philip III. in 1607, and once used as an armoury, we reach the Patio del Leon, where tournaments used to be held, and stand in front of the Palace of the Alcazar. The façade is gorgeous yet elegant, of a gaudiness that in this brilliant city of golden sunshine and white walls is not obtrusive. Yet, despite the Moorish character of the decoration, the Arabic capitals and pilasters, and the square entrance ‘in the Persian style,’ the front is not that of an eastern palace; and it is without surprise that we read over the portal, in quaint Gothic characters, the legend: ‘The most high, the most noble, the most powerful, and the most victorious Don Pedro, commanded these Palaces, these Alcazares, and these entrances to be made in the year (of Cæsar) 1402’ (1364). Elsewhere on the façade are the oft-repeated Cufic inscriptions: ‘There is no conqueror but Allah,’ ‘Glory to our lord the Sultan’ (Don Pedro), ‘Eternal glory to Allah,’ etc., etc.

This is a very different entrance from that of the Alhambra, the building on the model of which the Alcazar was undoubtedly planned. From the entrance a passage leads from your left to one extremity of the Patio de las Doncellas, the central and principal court of the palace. How this patio came to be so named I have never been able to ascertain. There is an absurd story to the effect that here were collected the girls fabled to have been sent by way of annual tribute by Mauregato to the Khalifa. Had such a transaction taken place, the tribute would have been payable, of course, at Cordova, not at Seville. Moreover this court was among the works executed in the fourteenth century.

The Alcazar strikes us (if we have come from Granada) as being on a much smaller scale than the Alhambra. It is very much better preserved, as it should be, seeing that it is a century younger; and if it vaguely strikes one as being fitter for the abode of a court favourite than of a monarch, it impresses one as being fresher, more elegant—in a word, more artistic—than the older building.

The Patio de las Doncellas is an oblong, and surrounded by an arcade of pointed and dentated arches which spring from the capitals of white marble columns placed in pairs. The middle arch on each side is higher than the others, and springs from oblong imposts resting on the twin columns and flanked by the miniature pillars characteristic of the Grenadine architecture. The spandrels are beautifully adorned with stucco work of the trellis pattern. On the frieze above runs a flowing scroll with Arabic inscriptions, among them being ‘Glory to our lord, the Sultan Don Pedro,’ and this very remarkable text: ‘There is but one God; He is eternal; He was not begotten and has never begotten, and He has no equal.’ This inscription, opposed to the tenets of Christianity, was evidently designed by a Moslem artificer, who relied (and safely relied) on the ignorance of his employers. The frieze is decorated also, at intervals, by the escutcheons of Don Pedro and of Ferdinand and Isabella, and by the well-known devices of Charles V., the Pillars of Hercules with the motto ‘Plus Oultre.’ The inside of the arcade is ornamented with a high dado of glazed tile mosaic (azulejo), brilliantly coloured, and with the highly prized metallic glint. The combinations and variations of the designs are very ingenious and interesting. This decoration probably dates from Don Pedro’s time. Behind each central arch is a round-arched doorway, flanked by twin windows. These are framed in rich conventional ornamental work. Through little oblong windows above the doors light falls and illumines the ceilings of the apartments opening into the court. The ceiling of the arcade dates from the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, but was restored in 1856. A deep cornice marks the division of the lower part of the court from the upper story, the front of which, with its white marble arches, columns and balustrades, was the work of Don Luis de Vega, a sixteenth-century architect.

Three recesses in the wall to the left of the entrance are pointed out as the audience closets of King Pedro; but they are much more likely to be walled-up entrances to formerly existing corridors and chambers behind.

The door facing this wall gives access to the Hall of the Ambassadors (Salon de los Embajadores), the finest apartment in this fairy palace. The doors are magnificent examples of inlay work, and were, according to the inscription on them, made by Moorish carpenters from Toledo in the year 1364. The hall is about thirty-three feet square, and exhibits a splendid combination of the various styles with the Gothic and Renaissance. The ornamentation is rich and elaborate almost beyond the possibility of description. The magnificent ‘half-orange’ ceiling of carved wood rests on a frieze decorated with the Tower and Lion. Then come Cufic inscriptions on a blue ground and ugly female heads of the sixteenth century. Then, below another band of decoration, is a row of fifty-six busts of the Kings of Spain, from Receswinto the Goth to Philip III. These date, at earliest, from the sixteenth century. The wrought-iron balconies were made by Francisco Lopez in 1592. The decoration of this splendid chamber is completed by a high dado of blue, white, and green ‘azulejos.’ It was in this hall that Abu Saïd is said to have been received by his treacherous host.

The Hall of the Ambassadors communicates on each side with the patio and adjoining halls by entrances composed of three horseshoe arches, supported by graceful pillars and enclosed in a circular arch.

Through the arch facing the entrance from the patio we pass into a long narrow apartment, known as the Comedor, where the late Comtesse de Paris was born in 1848. To the north of the salon is a small square chamber, called the ‘Cuarto del Techo de Felipe Segundo,’ with a coffered ceiling dating from the time of that king. North of this room is the exquisite little Patio de las Muñecas (Court of the Dolls) purely Grenadine in treatment. The rounded arches are separated by cylindrical pillars—I call them so for want of a better word—which rest on slender columns of different colours, reminding one of the early or Cordovan style. The capitals are rich, the pillars they uphold decorated with vertical lines of Cufic inscriptions, many of which, says Contreras, are placed upside down. The walls and spandrels are tastefully adorned with stucco work of the trellis pattern, tiling and mosaic. This court, though still harmonious and beautiful, suffered rather than benefited by its restoration in 1843; but the architecture has been not unsuccessfully reproduced in the upper story.

This charming spot is by no means suggestive of deeds of blood and violence; yet, just as they point out the Salon de los Embajadores as the scene of the arrest of the Red Sultan by Don Pedro, so here do the guides place the scene of the murder of Don Fadrique by the truculent monarch—a fratricide to be avenged by another fratricide at Montiel. The Master of Santiago, to give the Don his usual title, after a successful campaign in Murcia, had been graciously received by his brother the king, and presently went to pay his respects in another part of the palace to the royal favourite, Maria de Padilla. It is said that she warned him of his impending fate; perhaps by her manner, if not by words, she tried to arouse in him a sense of danger, but the soldier prince returned to the king’s presence. With a shout, Pedro gave the fatal signal. ‘Kill the Master of Santiago!’ he cried. Guards fell upon the prince. His sword was entangled in his scarf, and he was butchered without mercy. His retainers fled in all directions, pursued by Pedro’s guards. One took refuge in Maria de Padilla’s own apartment, and tried to screen himself by holding her little daughter, Doña Beatriz, before him. Pedro tore the child away, and dispatched the unfortunate man with his own hand. The murder took place on May 19, 1358.

To the west of the court is a little room, elegantly decorated, and named after the Catholic Sovereigns, by whom it was restored. Their well-known devices appear, together with the Towers and Lions, among the decorations, which reveal the influence of the plateresque style. The north side of the patio is occupied by the Cuarto de los Principes, not to be confounded with a similarly named apartment on the floor above. At either end of this room is an arch, adorned with stucco work, admitting to a cabinet or alcove. That to the right has a fine artesonado ceiling, and that to the left is decorated in a species of Moorish plateresque style. An inscription states that the frieze was made in the year 1543 by Juan de Simancas, master carpenter.