Convento de Santa Ana: Mantas and Honey by the Alameda
Why is it significant?
You have left the shopping streets behind. This is a quieter Seville of narrow pavements, tiled doorways and neighbours greeting each other by name, a street just off the long, tree-lined Alameda de Hércules. Find the convent door on Calle Santa Ana, ring, and wait for the voice.
Key Facts
| Place | Convento de Santa Ana: Mantas and Honey by the Alameda |
|---|---|
| Address | Calle Santa Ana 34, 41002 Sevilla, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 37.39850, -5.99650 |
| Part of Walk | Seville Tapas and Convent Sweets: Hidden Nuns, Old Markets and the Oldest Bar in Town |
| Generated | Generated |
You have left the shopping streets behind. This is a quieter Seville of narrow pavements, tiled doorways and neighbours greeting each other by name, a street just off the long, tree-lined Alameda de Hércules. Find the convent door on Calle Santa Ana, ring, and wait for the voice.
Behind this wall live Carmelite nuns, of the barefoot, or discalced, branch of the order, the reform started in the sixteenth century by Teresa of Ávila. Teresa herself came to Seville in 1575 to found a convent of her reform in the city. Her nuns were meant to live in strict poverty and silence, supporting themselves with the work of their hands... which, in Andalusia, often means the work of their ovens.
The speciality here is called manta, a pastry made from flour, egg, olive oil and honey. Simple ingredients, and that is the point. Convent pastry in Seville was never about expensive things, it was about patience: kneading, folding, frying, soaking in honey, the same gestures repeated by generations of women whose names nobody outside the wall ever knew.
Think back over what you have eaten and heard today. A stew that fed a palace full of families, a Thursday market that goes back to 1292, a bread riot, sesame pastries from María Coronel's convent, chalk on a bar of 1670, yolks from the wine cellars, almonds in the house of Cortés's widow, sherry from the jar, fried fish on a prison site and cakes on the route of the processions. Seville's food is not a list of dishes. It is a history you can eat.
And the evening is just beginning. The Alameda de Hércules, laid out in 1574 as one of the first public promenades in Europe, is a few steps away, and as the heat fades its benches and terraces fill with people starting their own slow round of tapas. Take your box of mantas, find a bench, and join them.