You don’t have to spend much time wandering around Seville to appreciate how much the city owes to its long past, and to wonder what it actually looked like hundreds, or even thousands, of years ago. The other day my friend Peter (aka Seville Concierge) and I had the opportunity to take a glimpse back through the curtain of time, thanks to a new type of guided tour that uses a “virtual reality” headset to show how the city looked in the past.
Past View Sevilla has only been up and running for a couple of months, operating from its base next to the antiquarium in the Metropol Parasol where we were kitted out with goggles, earpieces and iPhone, and as far as I know it’s the only tour of its kind in the world, which makes you wonder why nobody thought of it before.
There are two tours available at the moment (morning and afternoon); a short tour which takes advantage of the walkways on top of the parasols for panoramas of the city back to Roman times, and a long tour (the one we did), which lasts about two hours, and takes you to some of Sevilla’s best known landmarks, like the Plaza San Francisco, the Torre del Oro, and the world heritage site of the Cathedral and Alcázar (without going inside), and although I know a fair bit about Sevilla I still learned some new things about the city’s history.
As well as being able to overlay the present day views with computer generated images of the past, we were also treated to three short videos featuring CGI backgrounds and real actors in period dress (like the rest of the presentation in either Spanish, English or French). So, in Plaza San Francisco we were accosted by friends of Miguel de Cervantes, recently arrested on charges of financial irregularities in the conduct of his work as a tax collector, and imprisoned behind the grim walls of the Royal Prison on the corner of the square. In the Plaza Triunfo it was the turn of the architect of the alminar (the minaret, now the Giralda Tower), and the changes that have happened in this area are fascinating, from the Caliph’s hidden passageway to the lost wall around the Grand Mosque. Finally, down on the docks, we met up with the servant of the great painter Murillo, searching among the ships for a consignment of lapis lazuli for his master, and a few of the shadier characters on the wharves, and given a warning about the looming walls of the Castle of San Jorgé, the headquarters of the Inquisition, at the end of the bridge of boats on the other bank of the river. The tour ended at the Torre del Oro.
Not surprisingly, given its novelty, there are still one or two rough edges to be smoothed out – the equipment felt a little clumsy to use at first, though it got easier as the tour went on, and Sevilla’s bright sunshine sometimes interfered with seeing the images clearly – but our English speaking guide Lide was patient and helpful throughout, as well as giving us plenty of information between stops.
It was well worth doing, and I’ll be back for the second tour sometime soon. For more information, including a preview video, you can go to Past View’s website