Convento de Madre de Dios: Almond Sweets and Cortés's Widow
Why is it significant?
Halfway along quiet Calle San José, look for the long convent wall and the church doorway set into it, sober on the outside, as these places always are. Behind it, Dominican nuns have lived for more than four centuries, and yes, there is a torno here too. The site itself is older than the convent.
Key Facts
| Place | Convento de Madre de Dios: Almond Sweets and Cortés's Widow |
|---|---|
| Address | Calle San José, 41004 Sevilla, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 37.38800, -5.98900 |
| Part of Walk | Seville Tapas and Convent Sweets: Hidden Nuns, Old Markets and the Oldest Bar in Town |
| Generated | Generated |
Halfway along quiet Calle San José, look for the long convent wall and the church doorway set into it, sober on the outside, as these places always are. Behind it, Dominican nuns have lived for more than four centuries, and yes, there is a torno here too.
The site itself is older than the convent. Sevillian tradition counts it among the places where the Jewish community had a synagogue in the Middle Ages, in the old Judería that covered this whole corner of the city. After the violence of 1391 and the expulsions that followed, the buildings passed into Christian hands, and in the sixteenth century the nuns built the church that stands here now.
Then comes a name you would not expect on a back street. In 1570, Juana de Zúñiga, the widow of Hernán Cortés, the conqueror of Mexico, signed an agreement with this convent. She paid for the building of the church and its altarpiece and, in return, she received the main chapel and the exclusive right to be buried in the vault beneath it, she and her descendants. So the family of the man who brought down the Aztec empire lies in a quiet convent in the old Jewish quarter of Seville.
It is worth pausing on that conquest for a food walk, too. From Mexico came chocolate, which the Spanish first tasted at the Aztec court, and the tomato, whose very name comes from the Nahuatl word tomatl. Every legal ship from the Americas had to come through Seville, so these foods entered Europe through this city, carried on a history of violence that is rarely mentioned at the table. Before the tomato arrived, gazpacho was a pale soup of bread, garlic, oil, vinegar and water.
Back to the torno. The nuns of Madre de Dios are known for a long list of sweets: avemarías, almond bites, bienmesabe, which means it tastes good to me, and soft little magdalenas. Almonds and honey, again, the Moorish inheritance hidden inside a Christian convent. Now walk west, past the Giralda, cross the Avenida de la Constitución and turn into Calle García de Vinuesa, where a glass of sherry is waiting.