Sunday, December 23, 2018

Up on the rooftop

 Today we had a guided tour of the roof of the Cathedral which later included a walk-through of the interior. Emily still recovering from a 9-hour time change needed some coffee to get going this morning:


Once she had coffee inside, she was ready to go. Our tour headphones were stylish:


The roof tour is primarily about the challenges faced by 15th century builders and architects when building this giant gothic cathedral. My favorite part of the tour was this area on the roof where carpenters worked out the designs for arches, windows and buttresses. You can see the straight-edge and compass work scratched into the bricks over 500 years ago. Not only did they build these re-usable templates, but they left behind the record of geometric steps they used to create the templates. The original etchings are in black, the white lines are added by the historians that organize the tour to highlight the resulting shapes:


The weather was crystal clear and the parts of the roof stood in stark relief:


The city sprawled below at every turn:


The broad expanse of the roof above the center of the Cathedral:


Rachel took a picture of the group after coming down from the roof. We survived hundreds of steps up and down narrow, steep, spiral staircases:


After the rooftop tour, we went home and had lunch. We almost lost Emily to the couch:


Just to keep Emily moving, we went back to the Cathedral for the interior walk-through. This was the second time for Laura and me, so I only have a couple of pics. This one shows Sevilla from the top of the Giralda (the bell tower of the Cathedral):


After visiting Morocco and getting a clearer understanding of how this part of Spain and that part of northern Africa share a legacy of mixed cultures covering over 1,000 years, I have a new appreciation for the Moorish influences around Sevilla. This ablution fountain is in the courtyard of the Cathedral and is a remnant of the mosque that stood on the spot where the Cathedral now stands:


The sunlight on the Giralda was amazing as we left the Cathedral: