Explore the Moorish courtyards of the Royal Alcázar

The oldest royal palace still in use in Europe — the Spanish royal family keeps apartments upstairs. Built by Christian kings in the Moorish manner, by Muslim craftsmen, more than a century after the reconquest of the city.

The building is Mudéjar, and that word carries the whole story: Pedro I of Castile, a Christian king, commissioned Muslim artisans from Granada and Toledo in the 1360s to build him a palace in their own idiom. The result has Arabic inscriptions praising Allah carved into the residence of a Catholic monarch, and nobody at the time appears to have found this odd.

The Patio de las Doncellas is the set piece — a sunken garden and reflecting pool inside an arcade of scalloped arches and carved plasterwork. Beyond it the Salón de Embajadores sits under a gilded wooden dome, and the gardens run back through terraces, orange trees, water channels and a pavilion.

The gardens are the half people rush. They cover several hectares, mix Islamic irrigation with Renaissance and Romantic layouts, and are where the palace is coolest in the afternoon.