El Arenal is a neighbourhood in the historical centre of
Seville
Seville (; es, Sevilla, ) is the capital and largest city of the Spanish autonomous community of Andalusia and the province of Seville. It is situated on the lower reaches of the River Guadalquivir, in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula ...
, the
Casco Antiguo
The Casco Antiguo (Spanish for ''Ancient District'') is the city centre Districts and neighbourhoods of Seville, district of Seville, the capital of the Spanish region of Andalusia. The Casco Antiguo comprises Seville's old town, which lies on the ...
. It lies on the east bank of the
Guadalquivir
The Guadalquivir (, also , , ) is the fifth-longest river in the Iberian Peninsula and the second-longest river with its entire length in Spain. The Guadalquivir is the only major navigable river in Spain. Currently it is navigable from the Gul ...
river to the west of the old Jewish Quarter,
Santa Cruz, and south of the neighbourhoods of
Museo and
Alfalfa. Its name comes from the sandy nature that this east bank of the river once used to have. El Arenal has a history characterised by its former position as the port of Seville, until river silting forced the city to relocate the port to the southern edge of the city in the 17th century.
In the 16th century, the district called El Compás de Arenal, El Compás, or El Arenal was smaller than that of today and lay between the city walls and the river between the
Puerta del Arenal, and the
Puerta del Triana gates. A low-lying, sandy area, it was the main home of the Sevillan underworld, and the site of the notorious brothel, El Compás from where the other part of its name derived.
[Pike, Ruth (1971). Aristocrats and Traders, Sevillan Society in the Sixteenth Century, ISBN 0-8014-0699-4, Cornell University Press, pp. 203-4]
Some of the historical sites in the current neighbourhood are:
* The
Torre del Oro
The Torre del Oro ( ar, بُرْج الذَّهَب, burj aḏẖ-ḏẖahab, lit=Tower of Gold) is a dodecagonal military watchtower in Seville, southern Spain. It was erected by the Almohad Caliphate in order to control access to Seville via th ...
, 13th Century Moorish watchtower
* The
Reales Atarazanas, the Royal Shipyards
*
La Real Maestranza, Seville's bullring and the second most important in Spain, after the Plaza de "Las Ventas" in
Madrid
Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the Largest cities of the Europ ...
References
{{Coord, 37, 23, 01, N, 5, 59, 47, W, region:ES_source:kolossus-eswiki, display=title
Neighbourhoods of Seville