Palacio de las Dueñas

This guide to Palacio de las Duenas in Seville opens with a question: how a palace built for eleven courtyards and nine fountains was reduced to the single courtyard you can see today. It follows Antonio Machado y Alvarez, known as Demofilo, who rented rooms here in 1875 and spent his days writing down the sung poetry of Andalusia's flamenco singers, verses nobody else thought worth preserving. His young son was a boy running through this same courtyard at the time. Look for the slender marble columns still ringing the surviving patio.