A Visit to a Palace in Seville

During Spain’s “Golden Age” in the 15th Century, when Seville was the richest city in the Kingdom, several beautiful palaces were built including the place that we visited today - the Palacio de las Dueñas. It was the favourite home of Cayetana, the late Duchess of Alba.

Cayetana was a flamboyant bohemian, a glamorous member of Spain’s aristocracy, and said to have been one of the wealthiest and most titled people in Europe. She was loved by Spaniards. She would walk barefoot, dance in the street and she enjoyed the good life.

In 2014, following her death, her son Carlos Fitz-James Stuart, 19th Duke of Alba, opened the palace to the public. Visitors can see the ground floor and go up part of the grand staircase but the upstairs part is still a private family residence.

Last night, we booked seniors’ tickets to visit the palace with an audio guide (through the Get Your Guide website) with hopes that at 10 a.m., it wasn’t going to be full of big groups of tourists on tours. The palace is a short walk away from our hotel.

We entered the city-centre estate through a garden, with paths made of the typical ochre-coloured sand (quarried locally) called albero. That was also the sand used in Jerez’ horse ring and it’s the traditional colour of bullrings too.

The first part of the tour, took us through several beautiful gardens and patios. Apparently in the Spring, the gardens are full of colour. Right now, we could see tiny blossoms just starting to come out on many of the trees.

We could hardly wait to go inside this beautiful building. Home to a large collection of artwork, the palace houses over 1425 pieces of art, including paintings, tapestries, sculptures, and more. This artwork is protected under the Andalusian Law which strictly prohibits its sale. Our audioguide did a very good job of explaining what we were seeing.

The palace also has a great collection of antique furniture, artifacts, and ceramics. These items on display and add to the luxurious feeling of the palace. In several rooms, there are framed photos of the family with some of the famous visitors that visited the Duchess, like Jacqueline Kennedy, Grace Kelly, Cole Porter, Edward VIII, Salvador Dalí and Picasso, etc.

It is a definitely a romantic place, a palace that is very ‘Sevillian’ with its many gardens, the paintings and its warm colors.

A tour of this palace gave us a major insight into the lives of the people who lived here and how they lived.

We finished walking around just as the big tour groups entered with their group leaders trying to keep order while trying to keep people moving. We are happy that we were on our own.Read more