Postigo del Aceite

Postigo del Aceite stands in Seville as a surviving gate from the city’s old Arab wall. Its arch connects the Alcazaba area with the former port beside the Guadalquivir. Original towers still rise around it, surrounded by newer buildings and a small surviving wall section.

The gate dates to 1107, during Ben Yusuf’s rule, and once stood beside royal shipyards. In the twelfth century, people called it Bad al Qatay, the Gate of Boats. Oil and olives later entered Seville through this passage, linking trade with Flanders, Bruges and England. Benvenuto Tortello led a major reconstruction in the sixteenth century, while Alfonso X’s royal shipyards changed the surrounding port district.

Look above the arch for carved stone showing Saint Ferdinand with Isidore and Leander. Below it, a tombstone records Tortello’s work from the sixteenth century. Inside the passage, rails mark where wooden flood barriers once protected the city from the river. An eighteenth-century chapel contains a Baroque altarpiece dedicated to the Immaculate Conception, attributed to Pedro Roldán. During Holy Week, brotherhoods pass this historic gateway in Seville’s processions.