SEVILLE, Spain: They had only just begun renovating the bar in Seville when they made a startling discovery: the building housed a perfectly preserved 12th-century hammam, its walls covered with beautiful paintings.
What tipped them off was a star-shaped skylight that emerged within the first few blows of a hammer when the work first began inside Giralda, a bar in the heart of this southern Spanish city.
The discovery was “completely unexpected”, explained Alvaro Jimenez, the archaeologist assigned to monitor all such renovation works undertaken near Seville’s Cathedral, a protected area.
In total, they uncovered 88 skylights, star-shaped and octagonal, in the roof of this Moorish-styled bar with tiled walls that takes its name from La Giralda — once the minaret of the Great Mosque that now serves as the Cathedral’s bell tower.