Seville Cathedral & Giralda

One ticket, the cathedral and the tower

The thing to know before you book is that everything is on one ticket. General admission — about €13 online, roughly £11 — covers the cathedral interior and the climb up the Giralda, with no separate tower charge. There’s no upsell to weigh up the way there is at the Sagrada Família; you buy the standard entry and you’ve got the lot. Children under 13 with an adult go free, and over-65s and students under 25 get in for around €7.

Inside, head first for the Retablo Mayor behind the Capilla Mayor — the world’s largest altarpiece, a wall of gilded carving that’s genuinely hard to take in — and the Columbus tomb by the south door, where four pallbearers representing Castile, Aragón, Navarre and León carry the coffin shoulder-high. The provenance of the bones is famously disputed (Santo Domingo claims them too), which is worth knowing before you stand there expecting certainty. The Patio de los Naranjos, the orange-tree courtyard left over from the mosque that stood here, is a cool spot to pause on the way out.

The Giralda climb, and is it worth it?

The Giralda is a ramp, not a staircase. It was the mosque’s minaret, built so the muezzin could ride a horse to the top, so you walk up 34 gently sloping sections rather than spiralling up worn steps. That makes it one of the easiest big-tower climbs in Europe — fine for older visitors and anyone who dislikes tight stairwells — and the reward at the top is a clean 360 over the Santa Cruz rooftops, the Alcázar gardens and the Torre del Oro by the river. Reckon on 15–20 minutes up at a steady pace, and around 75 minutes for the whole visit.

Time it for the last entry, roughly 17:00–18:00 on a weekday. The midday crowds clear, the ramp is cooler than the Andalusian afternoon heat, and the low sun lights the rooftops far better than flat midday glare. Book a timed ticket online and you skip the on-the-door queue — which in spring and at weekends can run 30–45 minutes — by using the pre-booked entrance. Our verdict: among Seville’s big three, do the Alcázar for the rooms and gardens and the cathedral for the scale and the Giralda view; they sit two minutes apart, so pair them across a morning and afternoon rather than rushing both before lunch.