Stirring the Senses in Seville

SEVILLE, Spain — Knocking on the door of the timeworn Convent of San Leandro here pretty much epitomizes this mysterious and magnificent city.

Like Seville, the convent's door is imposing and reveals little of life behind it, but a treat awaits visitors. San Leandro is run by cloistered nuns whose primary contact with the outside world is through a rotating window cut into the old door. If you call when they aren't praying or meditating, a nun will answer by uttering, "Ave Maria purisima." (Hail, purest Mary.)

You are expected to answer "Sin pecado original," which means that Mary is "without original sin." Put theological arguments aside. This ritual has been going on for centuries and is well worth reenacting.

The voice will ask for your prayers, and after you say that you want to taste the food of God, the window turns, presenting a paper bag. It closes again after you've left a few pesetas.

Find a place to sit across the street in the Plaza de Pilatos and dig in for one of the yemas ("yolks") from the ovens of the good sisters of San Leandro. The food of God turns out to be delicious, sinfully rich egg-sized yellow balls made of sugar, egg yolk and a pumpkin fiber called angel's hair. There's no better place to eat them than in the shaded small plaza while people scurry along well-scrubbed medieval streets near the House of Pilate, a palace dating to 1540 and supposedly patterned after Pontius Pilate's estate in Jerusalem.

Eating sweets in a plaza ringed with orange trees while church bells clang is a perfect way to idle away an hour in Seville, the city that gave birth to everything we think of as Spanish, a place full of the Islamic heritage that constitutes the essence of Spain.

I first encountered Seville a few years ago when I stopped at its train station on my way to Portugal. I regretted not staying. This time, on a third vacation in Spain, I was determined to see the city I had heard so much about. So I spent a week there in April.

Sitting on a stone bench in Plaza de Pilatos, I remembered how Andalusian writer Gustavo Adolfo Becquer once gave musical attributes to the great cities of his country. Madrid, with its flair, bustle and political pull, was likened to a brass band. Becquer said nothing about Seville, but I thought that if one were to apply his melodic analogies, it would be all acoustic guitars and castanets, a dark-eyed girl dancing with a rose clenched between her teeth.