The French have a term for embracing the beauty of life and sipping the sweet nectar of human existence: joie de vivre. While one might suppose that the French invented this concept, they clearly have not perfected it.
That honour goes to the Sevillanos. Perhaps joie de vivre should be in Spanish. I have never before seen a city so consumed with enjoying itself. The Sevillanos live for life's sake, and when you visit, you cannot help but be swept up in the revelry.
- Experienced traveller-
Seville, capital of Andalusia, is considered by many the most beautiful city in Spain. Andalusia, in Spain's sunny south, is the region that comes closest to postcard images of Spain. Think Seville, and flamenco music and dance come to mind, images of Carmen and the amorous Don Juan, of girls in ruffled polka-dot dresses at the April Fair; of solemn penitents at Semana Santa (Holy Week) processions.
According to legend, Sevilla was founded by Hercules and its origins are linked with the Tartessian civilisation. It was called Hispalis under the Romans and Isbiliya with the Moors.
Draw a line westward from Seville to Huelva and another from Seville to Cadiz and you have a triangle enclosing the estuary of Andalusia's great river, the Guadalquivir. Here the riverbanks are lined with cotton and rice fields, orange groves, stud farms breeding the region's handsome Carthusian horses, and bull ranches raising toros for Spain's most famous bullrings. On the western side of the triangle are the sandy beaches of the Costa de la Luz.
Like all of Andalusia, this area was marked by the Moors - North African Muslims who ruled southern Spain from their conquest of Gibraltar in 711 to their expulsion from Granada in 1492. To this day, Andalusia's cityscapes and landscapes are rich in their legacy: Seville with its Giralda tower no less than such brilliant white villages, or pueblos blancos, as Arcos de la Frontera, with their Moorish-inspired thick-walled houses surrounding cool private patios, their whitewashed facades and heavily grilled windows.
This is also a land with a proud seafaring history. In 1485, Christopher Columbus stayed at the monastery at La Rabida. He set sail on his epic voyage of 1492 from Palos de la Frontera, up the coast. Visitors today may be just as happy to stay put, sampling the sherry in Jerez de la Frontera, savoring the seafood at any number of ports on the Bay of Cadiz, or absorbing about 3,0000 years of history in Cadiz itself, which may be the oldest continuously inhabited city in the Western World.
