Spain photos

One of my favourite ways to decorate my home is to frame special photographs from my travels … usually they’re printed in A4 size and simply framed in white Ikea frames (sometimes do l.o.v.e. Ikea).

The three that have just been put up on my living room wall were from my travels last year in Spain.

Toledo ... fell in love with the colours of the tiles

Seville, inside the Alcazar

Granada, from inside the Alhambra

More photographs than just these are special, though these are the ones on my wall and they please me.

New book

I am very excited it has finally arrived … an enormous beautiful book …

my beautiful new book; click on the image to go through to the museum book store for more detail

I had wanted to buy it when I was at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza [see my post from my travels], but it was just too heavy to justify hauling around the country for a month.

But now it is mine!! I can’t wait to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon, with a cup of coffee or a few glasses of wine, perusing its beauty.

Last Spain post

It’s hard to compress a month of seeing new places and artworks not seen before into one conversation, a handful of chats, or a clutch of posts. After over three weeks of moving around Spain and looking at art (museums and galleries) and architecture, I admit to a degree of visual fatigue at the end of it all!

So, as a way of putting the holiday aside – with respect to this blog I mean, for I am sure I will be processing what I’ve seen for many months and years to come – this is the last Spain post, with a few of my favourite photographs from the places I visited after Cordoba – Salamanca, Avila, Bilbao, and Madrid again.

Salamanca main plaza

outside the Guggenheim in Bilbao

Cordoba

Next on the itinerary after Granada was a day in Cordoba. The main attraction here is the Mesquita (also see Lonely Planet info), a place of worship that started as a mosque and was converted into a church when this part of Spain was conquered by Christians.

inside the Mesquita; this is not a trick, there are hundreds of columns

inside the Mesquita; the Mihrab, which points towards Mecca; this area "incorporates 1600kg of gold mosaic cubes, a gift from the Christian emperor of Byzantium, Nicephoras II Phocas"

inside the Mesquita

Granada

I’m back in Australia now, but have some more photographs to share of my travels in Spain. After Seville, I visited Granada. This is a pretty amazing place, with the Alhambra on the highest point in the city and the Sierra Nevada for its spectacular backdrop.

towards the Alhambra, with Sierra Nevada in background

Many many photographs were taken in Granada, a few of my favourites are below:

Granada as seen from the Alhambra

inside the Alhambra; I wonder if this is where Gaudi found inspiration for some of the carving he commissioned for the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona?

inside the Alhambra; I developed a love for the shape of the doors and arches

inside the Alhambra; a beautiful little niche

Seville

The city of Seville is just beautiful… below are some of my favourite photographs of my visit (I’m trying really hard not to make this a travel blog!)

Seville from the Bell Tower (Giraldi of the Cathedral)

Seville - it's doilies at 100 paces(!) in the lounge of one of the hotels I stayed at there

this colour yellow is the colour of Seville for me

Seville: museums

Of course there are other sights to see and things to do in Seville other than the Alcazar! Along with enjoying walking in the sunshine, I visited a few museums that had gold-related objects, and other art, that I thought were interesting enough to share.

Museo Arqueologico de Sevilla

In the Maria Luisa Park is a collection mainly of prehistoric and Roman objects and statues, including some mosaics from the nearby Italica Roman settlement in the process of archeological escavation.

I was having a bit of an attraction to repetition this day (photography without flash permitted by museum)

However it is mostly known for the (replicas of the) Carambolo Treasure of Tartessian (southern Iberia) gold jewellery, excavated in the region in 1958. I had a bit of trouble finding an image of the treasure, but see here for the best I could find. Unfortunately, it turns out that the entire treasure had been lent to the Museo de Georgia as of the 5th May – I was only a few days out! I can’t claim to be too upset though really, as I hadn’t known it was even there until I read the brochure that morning…

One interesting goldsmithing group in the other parts of the collection (not part of the treasure) were those in the below image – the ‘bezel’ setting is pretty rudimentary and I wonder if ‘chemical bonding’ (what we used to call ‘glue’) has been used?

(photography without flash permitted by museum)

Museo de Artes y Costumbres Populares

The Museum of Popular Arts & Culture is across the road in the park from the archeological museum, in a most magnificent building.

museum building

There were some interesting lace and embroidery examples, and in the lower ground floor were various setup ‘workshops’ of traditional crafts, like leatherwork, blacksmithing, tile painting, and goldsmithing (below).

"Taller de Obfebre" (photography without flash permitted by museum)

That’s some large piece of embossing / chasing / repousse – can anyone tell me which it actually is? (the metal is worked from the ‘front face’ and is sitting in red wax)

Museo de Bellas Artes de Sevilla

I was disappointed that it seemed like quite a portion of this collection was closed when I visited – it looked like the building was being renovated. After quite a bit of the heavy-style Spanish painting I enjoyed the early 20th century pieces here, though didn’t spend long here.

Bellas Artes; courtyard

… Last post on Seville tomorrow.