Susona, la Susona

Susona, la Susona

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They call me la Susona, and they still point at a house in these lanes when they say it. I have been walking this barrio for centuries, and in all that time only one witness has stayed awake the whole way through — one thing that saw the synagogues become churches, the plague carts, the painters, the tourists. I've broken its name into seven pieces and hidden one at each place I still visit. Collect the seven letters and you'll name my witness. Nothing here can be looked up; it has to be looked at, so start walking.

The walk

Santa Cruz is the former Jewish quarter of Seville: lanes too narrow for two donkeys, patios glimpsed through iron gates, orange trees, whitewash and ceramic tiles. This walk is led by Susona, a girl of the old judería whose story the barrio still tells, and who wants you to name the one thing that has watched every century of it. You'll read inscriptions, count statues, find a door number and photograph a patio. It ends in Plaza del Triunfo, with the tower in full view.

Where Susona takes you

1. 1

   Monumento a Juan Pablo II

   “The Pope by the Palace”

   Plaza Virgen de los Reyes, hinge of the old city, where a bronze pope stands near the Archbishop's Palace wall.

2. 2

   Una Ave María

   A stone corner cross set where two ways meet, steps from a plaque recording the plague Thursday of 11 June 1649.

3. 3

   Santa Cruz, Seville

   “The Heart of the Judería”

   Santa Cruz, the medieval Jewish quarter, whose narrow whitewashed lanes traded space for shade and remain its only honest record.

4. 4

   Casa de Murillo

   “The Painter's Door”

   A plain two-storey house on Calle Santa Teresa where Murillo spent his last years, later a museum and now council offices.

5. 5

   Monumento a Don Juan Tenorio

   “Don Juan, Life-Size”

   In shaded Plaza de los Refinadores stands a 1974 bronze of a stage seducer whom Seville adopted as a native son.

6. 6

   Triunfo de Nuestra Señora del Patrocinio

   “The Shrine of the Earthquake”

   A raised baroque shrine of 1757 beside the Archive of the Indies, built in thanks after the 1755 Lisbon earthquake spared the cathedral.

7. 7

   La Inmaculada Concepción

   “Four Sevillanos and a View”

   A 1918 monument in Plaza del Triunfo, a white marble Immaculate Conception ringed by seventeenth-century Sevillanos in stone.