Guadalquivir
— — Spain's one navigable river, low and slow under the orange trees.
Not only on a wall.
“The Guadalquivir runs about 657 kilometres from the Sierra de Cazorla in Jaén across Andalusia to the Gulf of Cádiz. Córdoba sits on the upper river, Seville on the tidal stretch, Sanlúcar at the mouth. It is the only major river in Spain navigable from the sea; the boats still come up as far as Seville.
Guadalquivir, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Guadalquivir is the fifth-longest river of the Iberian Peninsula and the longest river flowing entirely within Spain, running about 657 kilometres from its headwaters in the Sierra de Cazorla in Jaén to the Gulf of Cádiz at Sanlúcar de Barrameda. Its Arabic name, al-wādī al-kabīr, means the great river. It drains roughly 57,000 square kilometres across Andalusia and gives the region its central axis: Córdoba on the upper reach, Seville on the tidal stretch, and the Doñana wetlands at the mouth.
The tidal estuary reaches about 110 kilometres inland to Seville, making the Guadalquivir the only major Spanish river still navigable by ocean-going traffic. The Seville-to-Bonanza channel is maintained at six metres of depth for cargo vessels. At Sanlúcar de Barrameda the river meets the Atlantic across the salt marshes of Doñana National Park, one of Europe's largest wetlands and a major stop on the African-European migratory bird routes. The water carries Sierra silt that gives the river its olive-brown colour.
The river's banks hold three layered Andalusian cities. The Roman bridge at Córdoba, sixteen arches across the upper river, was rebuilt under the Umayyad caliphate in the 8th century and restored repeatedly since. The Torre del Oro in Seville, a 13th-century Almohad watchtower, still anchors the tidal quay. At Sanlúcar the river runs past the Bodegas Barbadillo, where manzanilla wine takes a salt note from the estuary's air. Each city's old quarter turns toward the water rather than away from it.