SEVILLE DISCOURSE

There is a hidden choreography to every city. A rhythmic flow of people navigating the agenda of their daily lives.

Perched on top of the world’s largest Gothic cathedral, 10 stories above the cobblestones of Seville, I have an unfettered view of the dance. A man in a white blazer with a mop of curly hair swerves to avoid a flock of tourists behind an orange flag. The steady clip-clop of a horse-drawn carriage echoes in an open square. Young lovers canoodle beside a bubbling fountain. Life in the Andalusian capital is certainly endearing.

Smiling, and sliding backward with my camera to frame the scene between one of the flying buttresses on the roof of Seville Cathedral, I almost trip over a bulbous protrusion jutting from the brickwork. “Be careful of the oil wells,” our guide remarks, belatedly, to a dozen other gawking tourists, gesturing at a handful of mushroom-shaped stone caps. They’re a relic of a time when the nave below our feet was lit by oil-burning chandeliers, which hung so high above the floor that the only practical way to refuel them was via channels cut through the