Sevilla

Sevilla is the most composed-about city on earth. Opera adopted it wholesale: Carmen at the tobacco factory, Figaro barbering, Don Giovanni prowling, Fidelio imprisoned, Beethoven, Mozart, Rossini, Bizet, Verdi — by the standard count more than a hundred and fifty operas are set in Seville, a repertoire no other city approaches, so that European music dreamed itself Sevillian for two centuries, mostly sight unseen. The city that inspired the fantasies exceeds them: the Giralda, the almohad minaret turned belltower, over the largest Gothic cathedral in the world (Columbus's tomb borne aloft inside); the Alcázar's Mudéjar courts still housing kings; the Archivo de Indias holding the paperwork of an empire; Triana across the river, forge of flamenco and ceramics.

The calendar delivers the two mightiest weeks in Spain — Semana Santa's processional pathos, saetas falling from balconies onto the pasos, followed within a fortnight by the Feria's lantern-lit city of casetas, sevillanas danced till dawn. The Teatro de la Maestranza by the bullring gives the operatic homeland its own house at last, with the symphony resident beside it. Orange blossom for incense, a fan for punctuation: Sevilla is the libretto Europe kept setting — and the original still upstages every production.