Arco de la Macarena

This guide to the Arco de la Macarena in Seville follows a twelfth-century Almoravid gate that spent centuries hosting royal oath ceremonies, from Alfonso the Eleventh to Philip the Fourth, before 1836 turned it briefly into a fortress. You'll hear why soldiers dug a moat and swung a drawbridge across it that year, bracing for a Carlist army, and what happened nearly two decades later when a general finally rode through. The lawn and garden walking path you're standing on trace that old scar in the ground.