Cathedral of Sevilla
Legend has it that the builders of Seville’s cathedral wanted all who came after them to think that they were madmen. It is the third largest cathedral in Europe and the British Isles. It too is built on the site of a Moorish palace or mosque: it has a patio of orange trees and a tower called the Giralda that might have started out as a minaret, but is now a belltower.
Before this trip, it had been ten years or more since I had seen an honest-to-goodness gothic cathedral.
It is a unique experience to enter these huge, soaring, vaulted spaces. The effect is exactly what the architects intend: it makes you want to drop to your knees.
Most of the cathedrals took decades to build - a hundred years, maybe. I think that's hard to imagine today.
Next: La Giralda