File:Seville Cathedral.jpg

English: Not much to say in addition to what is below. I did also convert this to BW and am not sure which I prefer. To me they are quite different images. A very impressive structure. Visitors are allowed to ascend the bell tower. In place of stairs are ramps that were designed to allow mounted horses to climb up. Click to view large.

The Cathedral of Saint Mary of the See (Catedral de Santa María de la Sede), better known as Seville Cathedral, is a Roman Catholic cathedral in Seville, Spain. It was registered in 1987 by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, along with the adjoining Alcázar palace complex and the General Archive of the Indies. "See" refers to the bishop's ecclesiastical jurisdiction. It is the third-largest church in the world as well as the largest Gothic church. After its completion in the early 16th century, Seville Cathedral supplanted Hagia Sophia as the largest cathedral in the world, a title the Byzantine church had held for nearly a thousand years. The total area occupied by the building is 23,500 square metres (253,000 sq ft). The Gothic section alone has a length of 126 metres (413 ft), a width of 76 metres (249 ft) and its maximum height in the center of the transept is 42 metres (138 ft). The total height of the Giralda tower from the ground to the weather vane is 104.5 metres (343 ft). Since the world's two largest churches (the Basilica of the National Shrine of Our Lady of Aparecida and St. Peter's Basilica) are not the seats of bishops, Seville Cathedral is still the largest cathedral in the world. Seville Cathedral was the site of the baptism of Infant Juan of Aragon in 1478, only son of the Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile. Its royal chapel holds the remains of the city's conqueror Ferdinand III of Castile, his son and heir Alfonso the Wise and their descendant king Peter the Just. The funerary monuments for cardinals Juan de Cervantes and Pedro González de Mendoza are located among its chapels. Christopher Columbus and his son Diego are also buried in the cathedral.

The Giralda is the bell tower of the Cathedral of Seville. Its height is 343 feet (105 m) and its square base is 23 feet (7.0 m) above sea level and 44 feet (13 m) long per side. The Giralda is the former minaret of the mosque that stood on the site under Muslim rule, and was built to resemble the minaret of the Koutoubia Mosque in Marrakech, Morocco. It was converted into a bell tower for the cathedral after the Reconquista, although the topmost section dates from the Renaissance.[Wikipedia]