Understanding the culture of bullfighting in Seville’s bullring

A tour of Seville’s Maestranza arena, and a visit to the bullfighting museum inside, puts a savage sport in context.

El Plaza de Toros de la Real Maestranza de Caballería de Sevilla

Coated in Andalucian red and yellow, the Seville bullring is the city’s finest sporting arena.

It’s not the biggest, by any stretch, but it’s the oldest, prettiest and most fitting.

El Plaza de Toros de la Real Maestranza de Caballería de Sevilla, to give it the full, magically unwieldy name, is the oldest bullring in Spain.

It dates back to 1749, and has an air of majesty about it.

Whether you agree with bullfighting or not, this is its spiritual home, and here every contest is about an elaborate dance to the death rather than indiscriminate slaughter.

Why book a skip-the-line bullring guided tour in Seville?

🚪 Skip the queue with express entry into the historic Plaza de Toros de la Maestranza
🧭 Enjoy a 1‑hour licensed guided tour covering the arena, chapel, and bullfighter courtyard
🏛️ Visit the Bullfight Museum to see original costumes, capes, and artifacts
🎧 Includes headset so you don’t miss a moment of expert commentary
🌍 Learn about the deep cultural traditions of Spanish bullfighting from local guides

👉 Book your Seville bullring tour now

The sequence of a bullfight

Tour guide Jennifer attempts to explain the carefully choreographed sequences to the uninitiated, although much is lost amongst the blitz of terminology.

Everything is framed in ritual, from the door the various combatants enter through to the colours placed on the bull.

There is a certain box where only the royal family is supposed to sit, hence it is left empty 99% of the time, and the six fights of the spectacle are all carefully broken down into three distinct acts.

The three acts

The first two are preludes, involving the matador’s team slowly weakening the bull through a series of totally overplayed, elaborate stabbings.

The third is all about performance, honour, bravery and man against beast.

The best matadors turn their back to the bull, get dangerously close to being gored, and kill their enemy in one fluid move.

What is astonishing is how many facets there are to every move.

It’s like the rules of cricket multiplied a hundred times, and then made a little more complicated for good measure.

Seville’s bullfighting museum

Quite how anyone in the crowd understands what is happening is something of a miracle.

Once each movement from every part of the arena is explained in both Spanish and English, it’s time to go into the bullfighting museum.

It’s only here that you get an idea of what the whole spectacle means in Seville.

There is a tendency from afar to regard it as some kind of quirky minority interest, indulged in by just a few.

This is far from the case.

Seville bullring capacity and ticket prices

Seville’s Maestranza is a 12,500 capacity stadium, and it’s a rare thing for it not to be packed out.

Tickets for the shaded seats – frankly a necessity unless you want a dazzle-blighted view and scorching sunburn – cost a not insignificant €130, and there is no shortage of people happy to pay that.

The celebrity of matadors

While this should indicate the popularity, it doesn’t quite show the high regard that the matadors in particular are held in.

Down in the museum, there are huge, reverent portraits of some of the legendary fighters. To say they are treated like pop stars would be wide of the mark; it’s a cross between war hero and universally acclaimed film director.

Gallito and Juan Belmonte

The stories of some of them are astonishing. Take Gallito, who made his debut at the age of nine years old.

By the time he was ten, he was a superstar, and by 25 he was dead, killed in the ring.

In that time, he had managed to get himself a hated rival, Juan Belmonte, and the pair are now known as the greatest bullfighters of all time.

Belmonte was a local boy so he gets pride of place here, if not a happy ending. Like his great novelist friend, Ernest Hemingway, Belmonte shot himself.

Bullfighting costumes

There are also costumes, preserved for posterity.

They cost between €3,000 and €20,000 to make, and it’s a wonder that the matadors can move in them at all. They’re incredibly tight, and covered in jewellery – life certainly isn’t made easy.

The medical room at Seville’s Maestranza

But the scale of the task really hits home in two other parts of the backstage tour. The medical room looks like a very expensive intensive care unit in a private hospital, drips and all.

That such medical apparatus is on site is testament to the fact that even a skewered bull is a dangerous one, and that death in the ring is all too possible. It’s not happened here since 1992, but survival is not taken for granted, as we can see on the last stop of the tour.

The final stop on the Seville bullring tour

It’s the room where the matadors gather their composure before heading out to face both the crowd and the furious beast. It looks more like a chapel than a dressing room, and prayers have been painted onto tiles. They’re specific to the bullfighter, and you don’t see many professions that feel the need for that much divine help. But then again, this is no ordinary profession.