The Orange Trees of the Patio de los Naranjos

The orange trees that give Seville Cathedral's most famous courtyard its name aren't nearly as old as the courtyard itself. The Patio de los Naranjos, a rectangular yard 43 by 81 metres, was built between 1172 and 1186 as the ablutions courtyard of the Almohad mosque that once stood on this site, the place worshippers washed before prayer. The mosque came down after the 1248 Christian conquest and the Gothic cathedral rose around the same footprint, but the orange trees visitors photograph today only date to a 20th-century restoration led by architect Félix Hernández, replacing whatever grew here before rather than surviving from it. What has survived intact is more remarkable than any tree: the mosque's minaret, spared demolition entirely, still stands beside the patio as the cathedral's bell tower, known today as the Giralda, and a fountain basin at the courtyard's centre, possibly Roman or Visigothic in origin, still occupies the same spot where the ablutions fountain once stood. For most of its eight centuries this courtyard cost nothing to enter. That changed in 1992, when the cathedral folded it into its paid tourist route, ending a run of open public access longer than most European countries have existed. The orange trees are new. The habit of walking through them for free is the part that's actually gone.