Seville Cathedral

Seville Cathedral, formally the Cathedral of Saint Mary of the See, is a Roman Catholic cathedral in Seville, Andalusia, Spain, begun in 1402 and largely completed by the early sixteenth century. Its design fuses Gothic, Moorish, and Renaissance elements across a structure 135 meters long and 100 meters wide, with a central nave rising 36 meters, and it incorporates the Giralda, a former Almohad minaret from 1184 that was converted into a 104.5 meter bell tower. On completion the cathedral surpassed Hagia Sophia as the world's largest cathedral, ending that building's thousand year claim to the title, and it preserves the orange tree courtyard, the Patio de los Naranjos, from the mosque that stood on the site before it. UNESCO listed the cathedral as a World Heritage Site in 1987 together with the adjoining Alcazar palace, and it holds the tomb of Christopher Columbus along with numerous Spanish monarchs and religious figures.