Seville Cathedral tours offer an up close view of this magnificent and immense structure. The cathedral has enormous presence and is a wonder to see and explore. It is the world’s largest medieval cathedral and one of the most exquisite of all Spain’s attractions. It was designated a World Heritage site in the late 1980s and has attracted millions of visitors since its inception.

The details of the history leading up to the building of the cathedral is a long and elaborate chronicle spanning centuries. After most of the country’s states banded together under the Iberian Union during the post-reconquest days (Reconquista) in Spain that spanned eight centuries, there was a great feeling of wealth and certainty. It is during this time of greatly boosted morale that the Gothic Catedral Sevilla was constructed. The cathedral exuded this spirit of tenacity and exhibited exactly how unified and strong the country was at the time.

The Seville Cathedral was erected on the site of an old mosque and demonstrated Seville’s power. During this time in history, Seville’s most important heads relegated most of each of their incomes to fund the construction of the cathedral, which took nearly a century to complete, illustrating just how great a task it was. The world’s largest medieval cathedral was painstakingly engineered between 1402 and 1506 and abounds with incredible detail. It is thought that the Catedral Sevilla was the brainchild of the architect who planned the Catholic Gothic Rouen Cathedral in France.

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To see the Catedral Sevilla is an astonishing experience and one which is easily embedded in the memories of visitors. Though it was built on top of the original mosque’s rectangular base shape, architects added the additional dimension of elevation, the cathedral’s most commanding feature. It is this added height that breaks many world records, and surpasses great buildings of the world such as Rome’s St Peter’s Basilica and London’s St. Paul's Cathedral.

Catedral Seville measures almost 40,000 square feet. The most central point of the building rises 137 feet and the chapels alongside the core of the cathedral are massive as well, almost able to hold a regular size church in each. Some of the most interesting parts of the Seville Cathedral are the components which were part of the original mosque—The Patio de los Naranjos which is the court of entrance, and the Giralda, which was a altered into the existing bell tower.

Christopher Columbus’s tomb is also located inside the world’s largest medieval cathedral, and is one of the busiest stops during tours. First buried inside the Havana cathedral, his remains were transferred during the 1902 revolution in Cuba. He now rests eternally in a massive grave designed in the later Romantic era style.

Brilliant gold and lavish decoration is found throughout the entire Catedral Sevilla, yet the church still retains a feel of simplicity in the lack of detail or adornment around the central nave and the placement of monuments and statues at the side corridors. Choir stalls and stained glass windows from the fifteenth century, the incredible Gothic altarpiece (which took one man’s entire life to carve), the Sacristia Mayor, and the capped Royal Chapel are some of the top highlights inside. Throughout the surrounding area there are many points of interests including Plaza de España, the Alcazar de Segovia, and Casa de Pilatos, making Seville an appealing destination and one of Spain’s most cherished cities.