Murillo Gardens

Located alongside the Barrio de Santa Cruz in Seville and with an extension of about one hectare, the Murillo Gardens are part of a land transfer located to the north west of the Retiro Gardens belonging to the Fortress. The gardens were designed by Juan Talavera y Heredia, a few years before the Promenade.

Gridded pathways with hedges and paving stones run through the Murillo Gardens, and where they meet there are octagonal plazas with central fountains and tile-covered bench seats. The resulting parterres are covered with a dense mass of vegetation giving the enclosure an intimate atmosphere.

It was Baldomero Laguillo Bonilla, a lawyer and town councillor, who proposed the name of Murillo Gardens, since they are near the house where the famous painter Bartolomé Esteban Murillo was born.

The open spaces feature a plaza dedicated to the painter José García Ramos, with tiled panels recreating famous works by this artist made by other artists from the same circle as the master, such as Miguel Ángel del Pino Sardá, Santiago Martínez Martín, Alfonso Grosso Sánchez, Manuel Vigil, and Diego López.

The vegetation features two huge rubber plants sheltering orange trees, celestines (Plumbago auriculata) and a magnolia tree (Magnolia grandiflora). Where the gardens border with the Barrio de Santa Cruz, you pass through two plazas with different species such as pittosporums (Pittosporum tobira), Canary Island palms (Phoenix canariensis), Washington palms, golden daisy bushes, laurestines, robinias, espireas, privets and on the wall separating the garden from the Fortress, a Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia). In the plaza dedicated to the painter, you'll find English dogwoods, Malabar nuts (Justicia adhatoda), thujas, sacred bamboo (Nandina domestica), a honeysuckle, a viburnum, one mahonia (Mahonia japonica) with yellow flowers and several more species leading us towards the Plaza de Refinadores. On the way, honeysuckle, and once there common marsh-mallows, hackberries, palms, Japanese pagoda trees, privets and a one robinia, accompanied in the summer by the sweet fragrance of jasmine and honeysuckle which make this place, presided over by the eternal character of Zorrilla, one of the most classic little corners in Seville.