Royal Alcázar of Seville: how to avoid the queue, and what the ticket covers

In 1364 a Christian king of Castile began a new palace inside the old fortress of Seville, and built it in the manner of his Muslim neighbours. Peter I, called the Cruel by his enemies and the Just by his friends, was an ally of the ruler of Granada, and craftsmen from Granada and Toledo worked on his walls alongside those of Seville. They covered them in Arabic. The inscriptions praise the sultan Don Pedro, and repeat the motto of the kings of Granada: there is no victor but God.

The palace has been a royal residence ever since. The king of Spain still stays on its upper floor when he is in Seville, which makes it one of the oldest palaces in Europe that is still lived in. It is also a place with one visitor gate and a limit on how many people may be inside, and that combination produces the best-known queue in Andalusia.

The Lion Gate, the entrance for every visitor. The square in front is rarely this empty. Photo: José Luis Filpo Cabana, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.

Why there is a queue

Everybody enters by the Lion Gate, the red gateway on the Plaza del Triunfo, opposite the cathedral. Entry is sold by time slot. People who arrive without a ticket stand in a line for whatever is left that day, in the sun, and in spring and autumn there is often nothing left.

With a ticket bought in advance you go to the gate at your time. You will still wait a few minutes, because everyone passes a bag check, but that is all.

How to stay out of it

• Book days ahead, and weeks ahead for Holy Week, the April Fair and any long weekend.
• Take the first slot of the morning or one in the last two hours. The coach groups fill the hours from eleven to two.
• Arrive ten minutes before your time, not an hour. Turning up early does not get you in early.
• Bring the identity document you booked with. The Alcázar issues tickets in the visitor's name, and the staff at the gate can ask to see it.

What a general ticket covers

The general ticket opens the whole ground floor and the gardens, which is nearly everything.

• The Palace of Peter I. The Courtyard of the Maidens, with a sunken garden down its middle that archaeologists found under a marble floor in the early 2000s. The Hall of Ambassadors, under a dome of gilded and interlaced wood made in 1427. The small Courtyard of the Dolls, for the private side of the house.
• The House of Trade. From 1503 the voyages to the Americas were run from these rooms. In its chapel hangs the Virgin of the Navigators, painted in the 1530s, with ships at her feet.
• The Gothic Palace of the thirteenth century, later given tiled walls and a set of huge tapestries of Charles V's campaign in Tunis. The emperor married Isabella of Portugal in the Alcázar in 1526.
• The Baths of María de Padilla. Not baths at all: rainwater tanks under a courtyard, a long vaulted hall with still water down the middle.
• The gardens, which are as big a part of the visit as the rooms: the Mercury Pond, the Grotto Gallery built onto an old defensive wall that you can walk along, orange and palm trees, fountains, a maze, and peacocks.

The dome of the Hall of Ambassadors, made in 1427. Photo: José Luis Filpo Cabana, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0.

The Baths of María de Padilla: rainwater tanks under a courtyard. Photo: Tesla Delacroix, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

What it does not cover

The royal apartments upstairs, the Cuarto Real Alto. These are the rooms the royal family uses, and they are visited separately: an extra ticket for a fixed time, a small group, an audio guide, bags left in a locker. Places are few and go first. They also close when the family is in residence. If you want them, look for the words on the listing or ask at the gate, and expect to hear that the day is full.

The general ticket does not include the cathedral either. The two monuments face each other across the square and have nothing else in common.

Reading the partner's listings

• A general admission ticket is timed entry to the ground floor and the gardens. The partner's own listing states that the royal rooms upstairs are not included.
• A ticket and audio tour of the palace is the same entry with commentary in the partner's app on your phone. There are few explanations on the walls of the Alcázar, so a guide of some kind adds a lot. Bring earphones.
• An audio tour marked "without a ticket" is the commentary alone.
• The audio tour of the cathedral, the Giralda and the Alcázar covers all three and includes entry to none.

These are the Alcázar tickets and audio tours our partner sells, with today's prices:

• on WeGoTrip Sevilla: Alcazar General Admission Ticket Book on WeGoTripfrom263 kr
• on WeGoTrip Seville: Alcazar Ticket & Audio Tour of the Palace Book on WeGoTripfrom321 kr
• on WeGoTrip Sevilla: Cathedral, Giralda & Alcazar Audio Tour Book on WeGoTripfrom99 kr
• on WeGoTrip Seville: Alcazar Audio Tour of the Palace (Without a Ticket) Book on WeGoTripfrom111 kr

Sold and delivered by WeGoTrip. You book on their site at their price; Viaqui may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you.

How long, and in what order

Allow two hours, and two and a half if you like gardens. A good order is to go straight through the first courtyards to the Palace of Peter I while it is quiet, then the Gothic Palace and the baths below it, and to leave the gardens for last, when you no longer mind the time.

From June to September the gardens are hot by noon and the tiled rooms are the cool part: reverse the order if your slot is late in the morning. Opening hours are shorter in winter. The current ones are on our page for the Alcázar of Seville.

The Grotto Gallery above the Mercury Pond, where the gardens begin. Photo: Anual, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0.

From here

The way out leads through the Patio de Banderas, a quiet square of orange trees with a framed view of the Giralda. A covered passage in its corner leads into the lanes of the Santa Cruz quarter. Seville Cathedral is two minutes in the other direction, and the Plaza de España is a fifteen-minute walk south, past the old tobacco factory that is now the university. See what else there is in Seville, or build a route through Andalusia with the trip planner for Spain.

Cover photo: Benjamin Smith, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.