urch. One of the mosque's few surviving portions, its minaret, called the Giralda, was incorporated into the cathedral as its bell tower. The minaret has surfaces almost entirely covered with beautiful yellow brick and stone paneling of Moorish design. The main portion of the Cathedral of Santa Maria is built in the Late Gothic style of France, but its various parts display building styles ranging from the Moorish through the Gothic to the Plateresque and the Baroque. The cathedral's interior contains paintings by Murillo and Zurbarn, among others.The finest survival from the Moorish period is the Alczar Palace, which lies near the cathedral. The Alczar was begun in 1181 under the Almohads but was continued under the Christians, so that, like the cathedral, it exhibits both Moorish and Gothic stylistic features. A decagonal brick tower, the Torre del Oro, once part of the Alczar's outer fortifications, remains a striking feature of the riverbank. Other examples of Moorish building are the tower of the Church of San Marcos (once the minaret of a mosque) and two sides of the cathedral's Patio de Naranjos. Seville has many other churches built in the Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, and Rococo styles.The Casa Lonja, adjacent to the cathedral and finished in 1599, houses the General Archive of the Indies, a superb collection of books, plans, manuscripts, and several million documents bearing on the history and administration of Spain's empire in the Americas. The University of Seville, founded in 1502, is now housed in the imposing Baroque and Rococo buildings of the old Tobacco Factory, which was completed in 1757. The city museum has a fine collection of paintings of the Seville school, with works by Velzquez, Zurbarn, Murillo, and Juan Valds Leal. Seville is still the seat of a Roman Catholic bishopric.More spacious and regular planning is found beyond the walls of the old city centre, where there are residential and industrial districts. M...
