Church of El Salvador

Before you stands the church of the Divino Salvador, the great red-and-white façade that presides over one of Seville's liveliest squares. It looks like just another Baroque church, but beneath its foundations lies the story of Islamic Seville.

1The mosque of Ibn Adabbas

In 829–830 the mosque of Ibn Adabbas was built here. It was the city's main mosque for more than three centuries, until the Almohads opened a new and far larger one in 1182, the one that would later give way to the cathedral. When Ferdinand III conquered Seville in 1248, the old mosque was consecrated as the church of El Salvador and carried on in use for centuries, almost unchanged.

2A church that collapsed

In 1671 the old building was pulled down to make way for a new one. It was not plain sailing: in 1679, before the church had even opened, part of it caved in. Work resumed under Francisco Gómez Septién and then Leonardo de Figueroa, the great architect of Sevillian Baroque, and the church was finished in 1712.

The base of the bell tower is the mosque's old minaret: nearly twelve centuries of stone on stone.

Inside, among fourteen altarpieces, are images much loved during Holy Week, such as the Cristo del Amor by Juan de Mesa and the Jesús de la Pasión, attributed to Juan Martínez Montañés.

3What to look for

• The bell tower: the lower part is the ninth-century minaret, the upper part was added by Figueroa in 1718–1719.
• The statue of Martínez Montañés in the middle of the square, a tribute to the sculptor.
• The side orange-tree courtyard, on the site of the mosque's old ablutions court.