Plaza de Santa Cruz: Murillo's Lost Grave and Rosina's Balcony
Why is it significant?
Find a spot in the shade of the orange trees and look at the tall, intricate wrought-iron cross in the middle of the square, black lace against white walls. It looks as if it has always been here. In fact, both the cross and the square are newcomers.
Key Facts
| Place | Plaza de Santa Cruz: Murillo's Lost Grave and Rosina's Balcony |
|---|---|
| Address | Plaza de Santa Cruz, 41004 Sevilla, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 37.38510, -5.98840 |
| Part of Walk | The Lost Judería of Seville: Santa Cruz, Susona and the Synagogues That Became Churches |
| Generated | Generated |
Find a spot in the shade of the orange trees and look at the tall, intricate wrought-iron cross in the middle of the square, black lace against white walls. It looks as if it has always been here. In fact, both the cross and the square are newcomers.
Until the early nineteenth century this was not a square at all. On this spot stood the parish church of Santa Cruz, and, like Santa María la Blanca, it had begun life as one of the synagogues of the Judería before 1391. The whole barrio, and every postcard of it, takes its name from that vanished church. Then, during the French occupation of 1810 to 1812, the church was demolished, and the space was left open.
Inside that church lay Bartolomé Esteban Murillo. He died in Seville in 1682, after a fall from scaffolding while painting an altarpiece in Cádiz, or so the traditional story goes, and he was buried here, in the parish where he lived. When the church came down, his remains were lost. Somewhere under this square, or nowhere at all, lies the painter of Seville's sweetest Virgins, and the city has never found him.
Now walk a few steps to the neighbouring Plaza de Alfaro and look up at the balcony that hangs over a garden wall. Guides will tell you it is Rosina's balcony, where Count Almaviva serenaded the girl in The Barber of Seville, Beaumarchais's comedy of 1775 that Rossini turned into an opera in 1816. Of course Rosina never existed, and neither did this balcony in the play. But Seville has inspired so many operas, Carmen, Don Giovanni, Fidelio, that it simply decided which balcony was hers.
That is Santa Cruz in one square: a real grave you cannot find and a fictional balcony you can. From the Plaza de Alfaro, slip into the lanes heading west towards the Hospital de los Venerables, the grandest building in the barrio.