A beautifully decorated 12th century Islamic bathroom, filled with dazzling geometric motifs and eight-pointed star skylights, emerged, somewhat unlikely, from the vaulted walls and ceilings of a popular tapas bar in the heart of southern Spain. of Seville.
Last summer, the owners of Cervercería Giralda – which has spilled canes and hearts near the cathedral of Seville since 1923 – decided to take advantage of local road works and the coronavirus pandemic to start a long-delayed renovation.
Although local legend and the strange historical document suggested that the place may have been an old hammam, most people assumed that the retro look of the Giralda was due to the neomudéjar, or Islamic Renaissance style, in which the architect Vicente Traver built the bar and hotel above it in the early 1920s.
“It was said that there were baths here, but not all historians were convinced and some thought it was much later,” said Antonio Castro, one of the four co-owners of Giralda. “We were doing some work and hired an archaeologist, and that’s how the baths were discovered.”
Archaeologist Álvaro Jiménez knew the rumors. But, like many others, he always imagined them to be fanciful. One day last July, however, the team was gently digging the plaster covering the ceiling when they discovered an eight-pointed star-shaped skylight.
“As soon as we saw one of the skylights, we knew what it was; it just couldn’t have been anything but baths, ”said Jiménez. “We just had to follow the skylight pattern.”
His explorations soon discovered an exquisite piece of design that dates back to the 12th century, when the Almohad caliphate ruled much of what today is Spain and Portugal, as well as a large part of North Africa.
“In decorative terms, these baths are the ones that have the greatest amount of decoration preserved from any of the known baths in the Iberian Peninsula,” said the archaeologist.
“Absolutely everything here is decorated and, fortunately, it survived. The background is white lime mortar engraved with geometric lines, circles and squares. In addition, you have red ocher paintings of eight-pointed stars and multi-petal rosettes of eight petals. These two designs alternate, intertwine and adapt to the different geometric shapes of the skylight holes. “
Although a lot of lime still needs to be cleaned to reveal the red paint underneath, the hammam-cum-bar has now been preserved and repaired and the Giralda should open again in two or three weeks.
Jiménez, who described the “kind of fatal alignment of different things,” said that the baths and the bar “have been reborn and become something wonderful; they were the right people, the right time and a little luck ”.
Castro and his partners are looking forward to a new chapter in Giralda’s long history. But they also offer a view of Vicente Traver.
“This was a well-known bar before, but now people can come in and have a beer or glass of wine at a bar that is also a 12th century hammam,” said Castro. “It is a good thing that the architect in the 1920s respected the baths – others may have thrown it all away, so we are grateful to him.”