White doves in Maria Luisa Park, a place where the Arab gardens were brought back to life by Forestier

The gardens were designed by Jean Claude Nicolas Forestier, a renowned French architect who worked at reshaping Paris together with his masters – Georges Eugene Haussmann and Jean-Charles Alphand – or at embellishing other major cities like Buenos Aires in Argentina and Havana in Cuba. The project of redrawing Sultan’s Garden in Casablanca, Maroc, a decade prior to this Spanish work was a chance for Forestier to meet his vocation.

Forestier believed in the functionality of the public space, in accordance with the ideas of Le Corbusier, and was in his heart a botanist passionate about every specie of plant. In the northern part of Africa, Forestier met with the Arab tradition of private gardening, with their green labyrinth, orange orchards and majestic palm trees. It was a luxury that was once reserved only to very few, but that could now be used for the urban community. And in Andalusia, the southern Spain, the examples of complicated gardens with artificial rivers and cascades were everywhere, from Alhambra in Granada, to the neighboring Alcazar, right here in Seville.
Nicolas Forestier created a vast park in Seville, fully making use of the Mediterranean vegetation, with orange and palm trees, pines that shadow the geometric alleys, but also with floral arrangements that the French had experimented with.

And the beauty of nature is enhanced by the animals that give life to Maria Luisa Park: the wild humming birds, the athletic horses that pull the carriages and most of all, the white pigeons. The doves are very friendly with humans and barely wait to be fed by tourists on whose arms they often venture.
The park is named after Infanta Maria Luisa Fernanda, Duchess of Montpensier, who donated the land for the park at the end of the 19th century. Maria Luisa was the young daughter of king Ferdinand VII of Spain.