Calle Sierpes

This guide to Calle Sierpes in Seville centers on the end of 1597, when Miguel de Cervantes, a middle-aged tax collector still years from literary fame, was locked in the Royal Prison that once stood on this street. You'll hear how he ended up there after the banker holding his collected funds went bankrupt, and about the ordeal he had already survived years earlier as a captive in Algiers. It also traces the street's older life as Espaderos, lined with swordsmiths hammering blades for the city's merchants and soldiers, long before a bank stood where the cell once was.