Giralda

The Giralda is old the Minaret of the Large Mosque almohade of Seville in Andalusia. After the Reconquest of the city, the Moslem mosque was converted into cathedral, and Giralda became consequently the bell-tower about it. Whereas the primitive mosque disappeared following an earthquake at the 14th century, and the building work of the current cathedral, Giralda was preserved and adapted to the Spanish tastes . It is about one of the most important monuments of the architecture hispano-Moslem woman, and which constitutes the most famous emblême today and more symbolic system of the town of Seville. So much so that an implicit rule of town planning proscribed to raise a building as high as the Giralda in the center of the Andalusian capital.

History

The Large Mosque of Seville

The current site of the Cathédrale of Seville was formerly occupied by successive temples. The Visigoths established there a first church, which was destroyed at the time of the first times of the Moslem presence in the Iberian peninsula. A building of small proportions seems to be come in substitution from the old temple wisigothic.

At the 9th century, under the reign of the emir Abd Al-Rahman II, was built the first large Mosquée of Seville, with the current site of the church of El Salvador, located not far from the cathedral. The Almohades actually should be awaited so that the large mosque is built whose Giralda constitutes the most invaluable heritage. At the 12th century, the Almohades, coldly unloaded the Maghreb, decide to make city their capital, which becomes populated more and more liberally and reinforces his splendor and its prestige. Wanting to equip its capital with a mosque vaster and worthy of the row of the city, the Caliph Abu Yaqub Yusuf decides of éfifier a new building at the place even where draws up the cathedral today.

Work was undertaken by the architect Ahmed Ibn Baso, who begins construction in 1172 to finish the carcass work heavy castings of it four years later. The building, inaugurated in 1182, was designed according to a rectangular plan, with seventeen directed vessels North-South and supported by broken Moorish arches. As in any Moslem building, an interior court bordered the room of prayer: the remainders integrate current Cour of the Orange trees.

Giralda

In 1184, the Caliph Abu Yaqub Yusuf charges the same architect with joining gigantic a Minaret with the Mosquée, on the model of similar buildings almohades: the Koutoubia of Marrakech and the Turn Hassan of Reduction. Work was completed in 1198, by an architect of the name of Ali de Gómara, nephew of the precedent. The tower measured 94 meters height then and was crowned of four spheres of copper superimposed of diameter decreasing upwards. The Giralda was then one of the monuments most sumptuous and most admired Al Andalus. While entering the city in November 1248, the Christian troops of the king Ferdinand III were filled with wonder, as testifies some the Estoria de España:

And been able of the torre of Sancta Maria todas tired known noblezas, and of quan grant the beltad and el alteza and known grant nobleza be: ''

In 1356, an earthquake shakes the city: the Giralda loses its copper crowning, and the mosque sudden of irrevocable damage, which will lead the chapter to decide its destruction in 1401. The top of the Giralda was temporarily overcome by a modest roof. In 1558, the architect Hernán Ruiz II is seen entrusting by the chapter the task to conceive a Clocher to be built at the top of the tower. The project of the artist is completed in ten years. In 1568, work ends in the installation of the statue of the Faith, run out of bronze by Bartolomé Morel, on an original drawing of the painter Shine of Vargas.

It is with the publication of the work of Rojas Villandrando, El viaje entretenido , which one allotted to the statue - turning on its base with the liking of the winds a such wind vane - the nickname of Giralda . To the 18th century, the name applied to the whole of the tower, the statue of the Faith taking the name of Giraldillo .

Since work of the 16th century, only some small modifications made during the 19th century modified the aspect of the building: suppression of certain decorations almohades in particular.

The tower, which was used as defense with the cathedral with the Moyen-âge (it was also used, inter alia, later like housing of the bell ringers), has today of another function only that of bell-tower and tourist view-point, but always constitutes a strong symbol of the city and its identity.

Giralda was registered in 1928 with the Spanish National heritage, then integrated, in 1987, the list of the World heritage of Humanity.

Structure

The architect of Giralda designed a square tower of 13,61 side meters, while being useful himself for the foundations and the low part of the tower, of stones resulting from Roman monuments . The remainder was built out of brick, like often in the architecture almohade. Actually, they are two overlapping towers one in the other: a tower on more reduced side falls under the vaster square of the external tower. The space ranging between the two structures is occupied by a staircase in the form of slope of soft slope to 35 flights, being used to reach the higher terrace. The choice of a slope rather than of steps was to make it possible to ride a horse (a popular tradition claims that the Muezzin being old, it was necessary for him to be able to go up to back of mule). The interior tower is in addition occupied by several parts distributed on five levels.

Decoration

The Almohades, Maghrebian dynasty founded at the 11th century by Muhammad Ibn Tûmart, were characterized by their engagement for a puritan Islam. This concern of simplicity is found in the architecture, often austere, characterized by the sobriety and the discretion of the decorative pieces, compensated by a total control of the proportions and lines, conferring a silhouette often majestic and imposing on the monuments.

Giralda does not escape this rule. The simplicity of the forms, and their power, are accompanied here by some decorative elements learnedly distributed, and carried out in same construction material as the building itself, namely the brick. This decoration concentrates primarily in the upper part of the tower. One notices the presence on each side, of coupled windows with Meneau X, with Arcature S stylized (exceeded or broken at a peak), crowned of a multifoil gothic arch. These bays are surrounded by vast panels to the interlaced multifoil reasons for brick, forming a network of geometrical complexes compositions made of rhombuses to the curved lines. Lastly, the upper part of the tower almohade is covered with a plank with brick, consisted of a series of blind blind arcades at a peak.

The alliance of the main lines of Giralda, and discrete and elegant decoration, confers on the unit an impression of a great simplicity and a great refinement, manifest in the control of the proportions and balance necessary between architecture and ornamentation.

The top

The top of the tower completely was refitted and increased at the 16th century, in a Spanish Renaissance style. The low part is organized in Campanile in terrace, where were installed a big number of bells. This part is overcome of another terrace of same dimensions, where takes seat a Clocher of plan more reduced, and consisted of three decreasing levels. The whole is crowned statue of the victorious Foi , high seven meters (four without its pedestal).

With all these elements, the tower rises with 97,50 meters.

Internal bonds

Random links: