Seville for The Romantics: a Friday-to-Monday weekend

A cypress ringed by Coullaut Valera's three marble women, love that comes, stays and leaves, sat under at the hour the park turns amber.

A hundred seats in a palace courtyard, no amplification, and a cante jondo that sounds like longing set to a rhythm.

Dinner under the fig tree in a patio against the Alcázar wall, with the fountain and a bottle of Rioja doing the talking.

The Medinaceli palace of chipped azulejo, Roman busts and bougainvillea, kept as a family house rather than a museum.

Valdés Leal's painted church and the Centro Velázquez, with a sunken patio that is the quietest place in Santa Cruz.

The splurge: a glass box on the Triana bank facing the Torre del Oro, the river going black beneath you as the lamps come on.

Skip the state rooms and walk the garden galleries, the Mercury pool and the Galería del Grutesco while the tour groups are still inside.

Antonio Machado was born here; the lemon trees of his poem still stand in the patio of the Duchess of Alba's palace.

A mansion dining room and a lamp-lit garden, pluma ibérica and a Ribera, in a street no visitor walks down by accident.

Bécquer lies in the crypt of the old university church beside his brother the painter; check the short opening hours before walking over.

A Mercedarian convent hung with Murillo and Zurbarán, almost empty on a Monday morning, with a patio to sit in after.

A farewell of torrijas and coffee at the marble counter of the pastry shop that has watched Sierpes since 1885.