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Updated: May 19, 2025
From the Tower of Jewels we turned our attention to those other towers, the four so charming in design and in proportion, Renaissance in feeling, their simplicity seeming all the more graceful on account of the contrast with the other tower's over-ornamentation. "I wonder what the world would have done without the Giralda Tower in Seville?
An old view, still in existence, and dating from the thirteenth century, shows it in its pristine glory, and there is another Moorish as old as the tower itself. After all that I had read and heard of the palace at Sevílle, I was more disappointed than even in the case of the Girálda.
The most celebrated Spanish example is the fortress and palace of the Alhambra, begun in 1248, and finished in 1314. Two other well-known examples are, the Giralda at Seville, and the Mosque at Cordova.
The hand of the Moor is clearly to be seen in Sevilla to-day, notably in the Alcazar and the Giralda tower, fashioned by the builder of the Kutubia that stands like a stately lighthouse in the Blad al Hamra. So, with the fascination of the city for excuse, I lingered in Marrakesh and went daily to the bazaars to make small purchases.
In the Girálda tower of Sevílle I expected to find a veritable Moorish trophy in the best state of preservation, open to that minute inspection which was impossible in the only complete specimen of such a tower, the Kutûbîya, part of a mosque still in use.
To one artistically inclined the creamy tower, modelled on that of the Giralda in Seville, suggests the collaboration of St. Gaudens and White, and the surmounting Diana the early work of the former inspired by Houdon's Diana of the Louvre.
Meanwhile they examined the gilt bronze statue of Christ, standing beside the Samaritan, who was leaning on the curb of the well, the astronomic dial with its zodiac, the grotesque stone mask pouring out the water drawn up from the river below, the stout figure of Hercules supporting the whole thing, and the hollow statue, perched on the topmost pinnacle, that served as a weathercock, like the Fortune on the Dogana at Venice and the Giralda at Seville.
He would not have had far to go to see real reticulated panelling, for the church is covered with it; but an even more likely source of this reticulation might be found in the beautiful Moorish panelling which exists on such buildings as the Giralda or the tower at Rabat, and if we find Moors among the workmen at Thomar there may well have been some at Batalha as well.
The Giralda is a square tower, in fact a minaret on a magnificent scale, divided into panels and richly decorated, and shows a masculine though beautiful treatment wholly different from that of the minarets in Cairo.
My friend Macartney-Smith has working theories for everything. He illustrated one of these the other day by relating something that happened in the Giralda apartment house, where he lives in a suite overlooking Central Park.
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