Iglesia de la Magdalena: Figueroa's Baroque Dome
Why is it significant?
Stop on the pavement and look up at the dome: ribbed, lantern-topped, and decorated so lavishly that it seems to be dressed for a party. The church beneath it is Santa María Magdalena, and it is one of the great Baroque buildings of Seville. It was not always the Magdalena.
Key Facts
| Place | Iglesia de la Magdalena: Figueroa's Baroque Dome |
|---|---|
| Address | Calle San Pablo 10, 41001 Sevilla, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 37.39060, -5.99840 |
| Part of Walk | From Baroque Domes to Las Setas: Seville's Architecture Between Sierpes and Casa de Pilatos |
| Generated | Generated |
Stop on the pavement and look up at the dome: ribbed, lantern-topped, and decorated so lavishly that it seems to be dressed for a party. The church beneath it is Santa María Magdalena, and it is one of the great Baroque buildings of Seville.
It was not always the Magdalena. This was the church of San Pablo, the main convent of the Dominican friars in the city, rebuilt between 1691 and 1709 by Leonardo de Figueroa, the architect whose domes, towers and twisted columns define Baroque Seville. Inside, the walls and vaults are covered in painted saints, angels and architecture that does not exist, a trompe l'oeil heaven designed to make you forget you are standing in a box of brick.
The Dominicans' story here has a darker side. When the Spanish Inquisition began work in 1481, Seville was its first great stage, and its first inquisitors were Dominican friars. In the decades that followed, hundreds of people, most of them converts from Judaism accused of secretly keeping their old faith, were tried and many were burned. And yet, in this same church in 1544, Bartolomé de las Casas, the Dominican who denounced the abuse of the native peoples of the Americas, was consecrated bishop.
So how did the church get its new name? In 1810, during the French occupation, the old parish church of the Magdalena, a few streets away, was demolished, and after the convents were closed the parish moved into the Dominicans' church. It brought with it, the parish proudly says, the font in which, on New Year's Day of 1618, a baby called Bartolomé Esteban Murillo had been baptised. The painter whose statue you just saw outside the museum began his life in that basin.
Take a moment at the side of the church to notice how tightly it is wrapped by houses, like a ship squeezed into a narrow harbour. From here, head east through the side streets towards Plaza Nueva, where the city's government has been housed for nearly five hundred years.