Guided tours in Seville

Triana begins where Seville ends, across the Guadalquivir, and it has spent most of its history insisting it is a town in its own right. It was the sailors’ quarter and then the potters’ quarter, and it is where flamenco took the shape it now has. The circular route takes in both halves of it: the old port to the south, the kilns to the north, and Calle Betis in between, which gives you the best view of the city there is.

Two versions run, on the same days and from the same place. The walk on its own is two hours and the cheapest thing on this page. The other one ends with a ticket to a flamenco show at a venue in the quarter, a few streets from where the art started, which is not the same as watching it anywhere else.

Almost everything written about Seville is about the ten streets around the Cathedral. North of Las Setas is the other half: Calle Feria and its Thursday flea market, which has been trading in the same street since the Middle Ages; the only one of the city gates still standing, with its run of Almohad wall; the Basilica of La Macarena; and Calle San Luis, which follows the line of the Roman road and holds the most extravagant baroque interior in the city.

Two walks cover it, and the difference is what you go inside. The short one is an hour and a half, from the outside, and it is the cheap way to see a quarter most visitors never reach. The long one is three and a half hours and includes entry to the Basilica and to the Palacio de las Dueñas, the house of the Dukes of Alba, where it finishes in the gardens.

This is one of the walks the people of Seville do themselves, which is not true of most things sold to visitors here. It sets off from the Plaza del Triunfo as the light goes and spends two hours on the legends, the tragedies and the unexplained things the city has accumulated over two thousand years and mostly kept to itself: the Barrio de Santa Cruz and the story behind Calle Susona, the layers left by Romans, Moors, Jews and Christians, and a few events recent enough that people still argue about them.

There are no actors and nothing jumps out. What makes it work is that the stories are real and you are standing where they happened. It is also the coolest two hours of a Seville summer day, which is why the locals go at that hour.

Tapas are not a menu category in Seville, they are how the city eats: small plates, standing up, several bars in an evening. The tapas tour does it in Triana, four tapas and three drinks across four traditional bars, with a guide whose subject is the food rather than the architecture. Three hours, and it is dinner rather than a tasting.

The wine tasting is the indoor alternative. Andalusia means sherry to most visitors, and sherry comes from Cadiz — but the province of Seville makes wine too, and almost none of it leaves the region. Five of them, sitting down, each with the tapa chosen to go with it.