Monuments in Seville

Sculptures, fountains and ceramic altarpieces.

Seville has a significant and valuable urban heritage throughout its streets and plazas. Among its sculptures, decorative fountains, altarpieces and commemorative plaques we can find exceptional works of art with a profound ethnological value related to different Sevillian traditions.

However, the citizens are not well aware of this rich heritage. Perhaps it is the fact that these traditional works are seen on the streets every day that they cause the citizens to feel indifferent to the value that these ornamental pieces possess. There is a greater indifference towards the contemporary works of art, for instance, the sculptural heritage from the Expo ’92: a valuable group of figures that lacked the recognition that they deserved from the citizens.

The main objective of the Seville Urban Heritage Guide is to educate the citizens about the cultural richness by demonstrating its value and the diversity of the works themselves. In addition, the spread of this information is essential for the conservation and restoration management that the Urban Planning Department performs.

In early 2012, the guide was published on the website of the Stock-Diagnostic Management of Public Monuments by the city in city 2008 and was updated in 2012. It is an inventory tool for the conservation of public monuments, which includes all the real estate with a cultural value that can be found in the urban framework of the city, without distinguishing their typology. Over 1365 monuments are inventoried; an individual record identifies each monument and provides the same basic data and information needed for conservation efforts.

The completeness of this inventory is undoubtedly necessary for the conservation of these pieces, however it diminishes their ability as informative and attractive means of the rich heritage that is present in our streets, gardens and plazas. Therefore, in this application it was considered necessary to makea selection of those monuments that had either an important cultural value or encompassed the image and aesthetics of the city, are an exceptional document on urban development and transformation of the city. These facts make this exceptional document for urban development and city transformation.

This selection possibly includes the 94 most representative items of Seville, of their appropriate time period and the space they take up. This collection contains pieces that go from the Columnas de la Alameda de Hércules, which was was considered to be the first public monument in the classical sense, to the pieces that belong to the Vanguard sculptures such as el Mural VerboAmérica by Roberto Matta. As well as magnificent nineteenth-century sculptures like those done by Antonio Susillo.

Urban Planning Bureau. City Hall of Seville.

Number Monuments