Since we have use of reason we enjoy the past history of our city. From now on, every time you raise your head to admire its greatness, you will think about these 7 fun facts:
1. The Giralda is over 104 meters high. It was for several centuries the tallest tower not only in Spain, but throughout Europe. In Seville it was the tallest building until one of the most controversial buildings arrived: Torre Pelli.
2. The Giralda has 35 ramps so that the Sultan could go up mounted on horseback to see the incredible views from the tower. This curious fact was overlooked by the writer Dan Brown (The Da Vinci Code), who set his novel “Digital Fortress” in Seville and decided to change the ramps of the Giralda for stairs.
3. The Giralda is an example of the cultures that populated the city, since the tower is formed by two different bodies. On the one hand we find the Muslim body of 1184, which was built to be the minaret of the Almohad mosque of Seville and on the other, in the sixteenth century, the current Christian body was added: a bell tower that crowns the tower as well as a statue that represents faith.
4. There are replicas of the Giralda all over the world: in New York there was one that was destroyed to build another building. In Kansas City, a city twinned with Seville, there is another replica next to a reproduction of the square Virgen de los Reyes. Closer to Seville, in Badajoz, there is a replica in small dimensions.
5. There is a replica of the sculpture that gives its name to the tower in the Prince’s Gate of the Cathedral. The name of the figure is Giraldillo.
6. The reference that took the Giralda for its construction was the minaret of the Kutubia mosque in Marrakech (Morocco), which was one of the largest works of Hispanic-Maghrebian art.
7. The bell tower of the Giralda has 24 bells and each of them has a name. The name of the biggest bell is Santa María Mayor.