Palacio Mudéjar

It was built on the initiative of King Pedro I between 1356 and 1366, next to the Gothic palace of Alfonso X, with the collaboration of craftsmen from Toledo, Granada, and Seville itself, and was later transformed during the time of the Catholic Monarchs and the first Habsburgs. According to archaeological research, King Pedro's palace was a new project built on the site of previous structures.

In contrast to the more formal character of the Gothic palace, which was built on the orders of Alfonso X in the previous century, this palace was designed to serve as a private building for King Pedro I. It used Arabic epigraphy to extol its virtues, particularly in Tordesillas and Seville. This is because, beginning in the 14th century, Castilian monarchs stopped imitating European trends and instead looked to Andalusian models for inspiration. As a result, Pedro I's palace was adorned with various Arabic writings extolling his figure.

On almost every plinth in the palace, the phrase "Glory to our Lord Sultan Don Pedro, may Allah protect him!" can be found.

The wood used for the coffered ceilings (aljarfes), lacework doors, and window frames is typically pine. The lacework is either gilded or multicoloured.

It has a first floor that does not cover the entire ground floor, but only a few rooms.

Doorway

The main entrance to La Montera is located in the courtyard. A large wooden eaves supports gilded muqarnas at the top. Below this is a tiled mural with an inscription in Arabic indicating the year the building was finished. This mural is framed by an inscription in Gothic characters that reads: 'the very high and very noble and very powerful and very conqueror Don Pedro, by the grace of God, King of Castile and León, ordered the construction of these palaces and palaces and these gates in the years 1,000, 4,400, and two years ago.'

The front door is rectangular in shape, with a voussoired lintel adorned with fine alaurique. Two lobed arches decorated with sebka and supported by marble columns flank each side. There are windows on the upper band, twinned on both sides and tripartite in the centre, with marble columns supporting their lobed arches.

The Dolls' Courtyard
The Dolls' Courtyard

The doorway leads to a corridor, which leads to the Dolls' Courtyard. As a domestic courtyard, it is thought that this area of the palace was intended for the queen. Between 1847 and 1855, it was renovated. During this renovation, a cornice with muqarnas and a neo-Mudejar mezzanine were added between the ground and first floors. Juan Manuel Caballero and José Gutiérrez were in charge of this reform. In that reform, marble worker José Barradas created the ten current marble columns.

The name "de las Muecas" is centuries old. Rodrigo Caro, a historian, speculated in 1637 that it was so named because that is where the children were raised or because it is a very small courtyard. It is now thought that this is because of the faces of girls or dolls at the beginning of the arches.

The Prince's Suite

It is accessed via the north gallery of the Dolls' courtyard. It was named after Juan de Trastámara, a Catholic Monarch's son who was born in the Alcázar in 1478. The ceiling is adorned with the Catholic Monarchs' heraldry. The room is divided into three sections by plaster arches and is where Isabella I gave birth to Prince John on June 30, 1478.

The Maidens' Courtyard

This is a 21x15-metre-long rectangular courtyard surrounded by four galleries, two with seven and two with five arches. The courtyard's centrepiece is a pool with large flowerbeds sunken one metre on each side. Interlacing semicircular arches adorn the sides of these flowerbeds. Sebka and plaster reliefs decorate the lobed arches. Between 1580 and 1584, all of this was buried93, and a marble floor was laid, for which craftsmen from Macael, Espera, and Acán were brought in. During archaeological excavations in 2002, the flowerbeds and pool were discovered.

There were some rooms on the ground floor that were accessible to guests, while the upper floor only had private rooms. Between 1540 and 1572, the upper floor of this courtyard was renovated. This period is represented by semicircular arches supported by marble columns with Ionic capitals created in Genoa by Antonio Maria Aprile da Carona and Bernardino da Bissone. Between 1560 and 1569, the ground-floor columns were replaced by others made in the same Italian city by Francesco and Giovanni Lugano and Francesco da Carona.

The Royal Alcove

The Maidens' courtyard, from which several rooms can be accessed.

The Courtyard of the Maidens leads to the Royal Alcove, also known as the bedroom of the Moorish Kings. The interior is divided into two rooms that are linked by a three-horseshoe arched entrance. The first room, known as the Hall of the Lost Steps, is accessible from the courtyard and features a coffered ceiling from the reign of the Catholic Monarchs.

It has plasterwork friezes on the walls and a coffered ceiling from the 15th century. Lacework decorates the doors that open onto the courtyard, including six-armed circular figures, and the two windows in this room are decorated with stars and eight-armed wheels.

Charles V's Ceiling Room

The Courtyard of the Maidens also leads to the Hall of Charles V's Ceiling. It has Mudejar-style wooden doors. In the centre of the doors are geometric figures with eight arms shaped like wheels. This room's two shutters are adorned with four-, six-, and eight-pointed stars.

Because of the Corpus Christi inscription on the door, it is thought to have been a chapel. If that's the case, the royal alcove next door could have been a presbytery. In any case, the religious inscription on the door could simply be Pedro I's wish.

It got its name from its coffered ceiling, which was built between 1541 and 1543. There are 75 octagonal coffers in this coffered ceiling. Sebastián de Segovia is credited with it.

The Hall of Ambassadors

One of the Hall of Ambassadors' two horseshoe-arched entrances (Palace of Peter I).
The Hall of Ambassadors' Dome Other similar domes in Spain include the one on the main staircase of the Casa de Pilatos86 in Seville and the Torrijos family's late 15th-century dome, which is housed in the National Archaeological Museum.

The entrance doors from the Maidens' courtyard date from the 14th century. They are made of wood and have geometrical carvings with vegetal motifs on them. Figures of eight and twelve arms in the shape of wheels can be found in the central parts of the gates. In the margins, there is lefe tracery. They denote the year the Mudéjar palace was completed, 1364. There are inscriptions in Arabic praising the lord of the palace on the outside, and phylacteries with Gothic characters in Latin with Psalm 54 and the beginning of the Gospel of Saint John on the inside.

The Ambassadors' Hall is the most opulent section of the palace. The Al-Turayya Hall or Pleiades Hall of the Al-Mubarak Al-Mutamid Citadel or Hall of the Blessing of Al-Mutamid was located here. The current hall corresponds to Peter I's construction. It has a square floor plan (qubba) and a golden hemispherical dome that covers it. This type of dome is known as the 'half-orange' model. 86106 Diego Ruiz built the dome in 1427. A Gothic arrocabe with portraits of monarchs is located beneath the dome. The portraits on this wooden frieze are mediaeval, but they were replaced during a renovation between 1599 and 1600. Diego de Esquivel painted 56 panels in chronological order, from Chindasvinto to Philip III. Pedro I is located in the facing's southern half.

The kings, identified by name, appear in a seated, crowned position with a sword in their right hand and a globe in their left; at a lower level is their coat of arms and, below that, their reign period.

107 A frieze with the coats of arms of Castile and León is located above the series.

The walls are tiled and plastered, as in the other rooms of the palace.

108 The upper part of the hall has wooden balconies that were built at the end of the 16th century. There are entrances on both sides with two marble columns supporting triple horseshoe arches.

This room is flanked by two rooms, one to the north and one to the south, each with 26 plaster panels cut out and outlined with a burin to make the figures depicted stand out against the ataurique background. They are approximately 50 centimetres in the north room and slightly larger in the south room. Plaster plaques in both rooms depict kings, princes, knights, ladies, tournaments, and fantastic animals. These scenes may have been inspired by Alfonso XI's Libro de la Montera56 and the Crónica troyana, a chronicle commissioned by Alfonso XI and written by the scribe and miniaturist Nicolás González. González finished it in December 1350, after Alfonso XI had been succeeded by Pedro I.

The Ceiling Room of Philip II

It is reached via an entrance in the Hall of Ambassadors. Because it is adorned with birds, this entrance is known as the Pavones' arch. It's a rectangular room with a mullioned window that looks out onto the Prince's garden.

The first floor

The Royal High Room is located on the first floor of the Mudejar palace and was built in the 13th century by Pedro I. It was reformed by the Catholic Monarchs in the 15th century and by Isabella II in the 19th century.

It is known as the High Royal Room, and there are several rooms for the monarchs to use. Murillo's painting The Miracle of Saint Francis Solano and the Bull can be found in the room that served as the dining room in the nineteenth century.

The Oratory of the Catholic Monarchs, located on the palace's upper floor, houses the altar and tiled altarpiece of The Visitation of the Virgin, created in 1504 by the Italian ceramist Francisco Niculoso Pisano.