United States or New Zealand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The Moorish sculptures are reproduced in plaster, which, at least, has a better effect than the fatal whitewash under which the original tints of the Alcazar are hidden. In the courts stand a number of Roman busts Spanish antiquities, and therefore not of great merit singularly out of place in niches surrounded by Arabic devices and sentences from the Koran. This morning, I climbed the Giralda.
The tall Giralda beckoned to us over the tops of the intervening buildings, and finally a turn in the street brought us to the ancient Moorish gateway on the northern side. This is an admirable specimen of the horse-shoe arch, and is covered with elaborate tracery. It originally opened into the court, or haram, of the mosque, which still remains, and is shaded by a grove of orange trees.
But the only result of such treatment was that Miss Wakefield would say to the clerk in the office: "Your Eastern people have such stiff ways that they make me homesick. But they don't mean any harm, I suppose." Some of the families in the Giralda rather liked the new cashier; these were they who had children.
The ascent to the Giralda is very long and very fatiguing; and we had to pause on the various landings and in the singular belfry in order that Miss Daguilar might recruit her strength and breath. As we rested on one of these occasions, in a gallery which runs round the tower below the belfry, we heard a great noise of shouting, and a clattering of sticks among the bells.
The most remarkable edifices are the cathedral and Alcazar, or palace of the Moorish kings; the tower of the former, called La Giralda, belongs to the period of the Moors, and formed part of the grand mosque of Seville: it is computed to be one hundred ells in height, and is ascended not by stairs or ladders but by a vaulted pathway, in the manner of an inclined plane: this path is by no means steep, so that a cavalier might ride up to the top, a feat which Ferdinand the Seventh is said to have accomplished.
It is no longer nefarious, or even mischievous, now the reporters have got done attributing a malign meteorological influence to it. I wish I could say as much for the white marble rocket presently soaring up from the east side of Madison Square, and sinking the beautiful reproduction of the Giralda tower in the Garden half-way into the ground.
Soon the graceful Giralda, or famous Tower of Seville, arose in the distance; but, from the windings of the river, we were half an hour in reaching the landing-place. One sees nothing of the far-famed beauty of Seville, on approaching it. The boat stops below the Alameda, where the passengers are received by Custom-House officers, who, in my case, did not verify the stories told of them in Cadiz.
Martin's church near Ludgate, his image great and terrible, triumphantly riding on horseback, artificially cast in brass, was placed on the Western gate of the city, to the further fear and terror of the Saxons!" In 1562 Bartolomeo Morel, who made the celebrated statue of the Giralda Tower in Seville, executed a fifteen branched candelabrum for the Cathedral.
Word Of The Day