Images: Tiles of Seville

I’m sure I’m not the only who has good intentions that run wildly astray. I have a long list of blog posts I wanted to write over the course of the last school year. And here I am running full force into the second school year with 17 topics I never got around to writing about. Hopefully I’ll have a chance to intersperse them here and there throughout the coming months, even as I add more topics to the ever-growing list.

Whether I ever get around to writing all those posts is questionable, but I still wanted to share one of my favorite things about our visit to Seville, Spain. 

Seville sits at the crossroads of an interesting time in history. Orange trees line streets. Alleyways lead to hidden local shops. Its Gothic cathedral is the largest of its kind in the world. The weather was mild in December, and the tapas were the best of any we ate in Spain.

And my favorite part of all these wonderful things were the artfully decorated tiles everywhere in town.

Hand-painted and colorful, the tiles are embedded in sidewalks, used as building numbers and identify street names. At the Alcázar of Seville, the city’s royal palace, my creative bug kicked into high gear because there was a whole exhibit on tile patterns. I snapped tons of pictures, suddenly imagining myself as a mosaic artist or stationery designer, though none of these have come to fruition, of course.

Nonetheless, I absolutely adored all the imaginative, intricately designed tile work, and I wanted to share some of my findings with you.

On every street corner, at every turn. Street signs aren’t just indicators of direction. They are pieces of art.

Tiles line windows and doors and stoops and steps. A simple, bright building is gussied up even more with intricate tile work.

Religious icons are a mainstay throughout Spain, and in Seville, they’re memorialized in tile.

Not sure where to go? Tiles even reveal simple, hand-drawn maps.

Everywhere we walked, I looked up, down and around, because tiny pieces of art are hidden everywhere. Thousands of people have walked on these pieces.