It is hot in Seville. Even though it is only a little after nine in the morning, the temperature is already climbing into the high thirties. The streets shimmer with it, heat rising off the paving stones, the air thick with dust and coffee and chatter. Next to the café—air conditioned, quiet—where I drank a latte, a heavy wooden door stands ajar, unnoticed by most of the passersby.
Drawn more by curiosity than design, I step through the archway… and the city falls away. The Iglesia de la Anunciación feels like a hidden chamber of time. A shaft of sunlight pierces through the oculus high in the dome, carving a radiant path through the cool interior air. It lands gently on the golden altarpiece, igniting the carved saints in a blaze of divine warmth. For a moment, everything else disappears. No footsteps. No sounds. Just light and breath.
This church sits right in the heart of Seville, within the historic Collación del Salvador district. It was once nestled beside the now-vanished Convent of the Incarnation and its plaza, surrounded by a web of sacred spaces: Santa Inés, San Antonio Abad, the Hospital of Mercy, and the parishes of San Pedro and Santa Catalina. A neighbourhood soaked in the presence of devotion and cloistered lives.
Now, it is a place where people simply come to pray, to light candles, and, for me at least, to sit and gaze up at the lux per oculum: the light through the oculus.
The oculus—a round eye set high in the dome—is one of the oldest and simplest architectural devices. In ancient temples, it was the only source of light, a direct link between earth and sky. Here in the Iglesia de la Anunciación, it plays the same role. A single circle of glass, pale and clear, crowns the dome like a celestial window. Light pours through it and falls in a long, slow shaft across the worn floor, brushing the altar, the columns, the weathered gold.
It’s not just illumination. It’s intention. The builders of this church knew exactly what they were doing: carving a path for heaven to touch stone. Even now, centuries later, and with some of the dome’s paint peeling away, the effect remains. I sit in a wooden pew, back against the cold stone, and watch the light move. It’s like watching time itself drift through the room. There are no choirs. No sermons. Just silence and sun.
There’s something wonderfully unpolished about this place. The massive fluted column are streaked in fading red and ochre. The paint is peeling, the plaster cracked in places. Water stains and age spots bloom across the ceiling like bruises of time. This church is no pristine showroom. It’s dusty. Knocked around. You can see where fingers have rubbed the edges, where candles once smoked the walls, where sunlight and silence have done their slow, invisible work.
And I love it for that. Too many churches in Europe feel embalmed: roped off, restored into sterility, like museum dioramas of faith. But not La Anunciación. This one still breathes. Still listens. Even with the occasional squeak of tourist shoes or a camera shutter snapping, there’s a weight here that hushes you without asking.
The gold still glows, but it glows with memory, not perfection. The saints in the altarpiece don’t seem lofty: they seem present, as if they’ve been standing there for centuries watching life parade in and out, day after day.
This is the kind of place where you can sit unnoticed in a pew for an hour, scribbling thoughts in a notebook or just watching the way the light shifts as the sun climbs. It’s not grand. Not perfect. But it’s real.
There’s something poetic about that shaft of sunlight catching the dust mid-air, illuminating worn frescoes and old gold. The wear and water damage inside the dome speak to centuries of use, decay, and care. History hangs visibly on these walls.
It’s not the grandest church in Seville. But here, under the dome of La Anunciación, with light cascading through the oculus and dust dancing in the air, time folds inwards. I feel like a pilgrim, even if I didn’t mean to be one.
TravelWriterLife 