Real Alcázar Seville: Which Ticket, the Half-Hour Slot and a Route Through the Palace

Entry to the Real Alcázar is a half-hour slot booked in your name, and the box office queue is only the backup plan. Everything else in the visit follows from that slot: the arrival, the route through the palace of King Peter and the length of the garden walk. Book it first and the rest falls into place.

The general ticket costs €15.50 and covers King Peter's palace and the gardens, entered at the time printed on it. The reduced ticket costs €8 and is open to everyone over 65, to students aged 14 to 30 and to European Youth Card holders of the same age, whatever their nationality. Older guides still say EU students only, and that rule is gone.

The upper rooms add €5.50 to the general ticket and are bought together with it. They are the Cuarto Real Alto upstairs, visited in a small group with a guide, and latecomers are not let in. For a first visit with one morning the general ticket is enough. Spend the supplement only if the rooms upstairs are the reason you are going.

The ticket cannot be changed or refunded, and details cannot be corrected after purchase. The box office in the Patio de Banderas sells tickets for the same day only, from 9 am, by card only.

When to come and how entry works

The entrance is in the Patio de Banderas, the small square beside the cathedral. Opening hours: 9.30 am–7 pm from 1 April to 30 September, 9.30 am–5 pm from 1 October to 31 March. Closed days: 1 and 6 January, Good Friday and 25 December. People enter in slots every half hour with a limited number of places, so the printed time matters more here than the date, and you should arrive a little ahead of it, since latecomers can be turned away.

Take the first slot of the day, because the tour buses reach the Alcázar between 11.00 and 14.00, and the garden gets heavy after midday with heat, shade that runs out and peacocks that do not care. Evacuation begins at 19.45 in summer and at 17.45 in winter, which gives the afternoon slot a hard edge. Count on at least half a morning inside, longer if you stay in the gardens.

Pedro I's palace first, then the gardens

You cross the Patio de la Montería and meet the mudéjar façade of King Peter's palace, built in 1364–1366 with craftsmen from Granada. The palace opens onto the Patio de las Doncellas, a courtyard with a long pool, orange trees and galleries on two floors. Stay a while here. The upper floors still serve the Spanish royal family.

One way through is to go from the courtyard to the domed Sala de los Embajadores, then out into the gardens to the Estanque de Mercurio and down to the Baños de doña María de Padilla. The official site gives no fixed route, so follow the signs. Fans of the series Game of Thrones will recognise the ambassadors' hall, the pool and the baths, since all of them were filmed here. The palace is the long part of the visit and the garden is the walk that follows.

2 daysThe Seville itinerary puts this first 9.30 slot at the start of a day and sends you to the cathedral afterwards, so the two sights fit into one morning.Seville in 2 days →

When there are no tickets

In spring and autumn the slots go weeks ahead, and the official sale is the only place to buy at face value. When it shows nothing for your date, four options remain, and the first two are free of resellers.

• Open a different day or hour on the official site, since a slot may be free on another day when your first choice is full.
• Go to the box office in the Patio de Banderas at 9.00 for a same-day ticket, with a bank card and a place in line, buying only for yourself.
• Join a guided tour from a reseller, who holds a separate quota of entries and adds a guide, though not every tour includes the upper rooms.
• Look at the official night tour with actors, which is sold separately from the day ticket.

When to goThe page on when to go shows when the summer afternoon pushes you under a roof and which months suit the garden best.The best time to visit Seville →