Love's Stages: The Marble Memorial to Bécquer at Maria Luisa Park

Overlooking a ciprés de los pantanos (Cypress tree), the Glorieta de Bécquer in Sevilla's Maria Luisa Park houses a marble monument dedicated to the poet Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer. Designed by Lorenzo Coullaut-Valera in 1911, the monument displays a central marble bust of Bécquer on a pedestal, bearing his name and birth and death years. Inscriptions around the bust show love in various stages, subtly depicted by a circle of three feminine stone figures: representation of arrival, blossoming, and loss. The sculpture is gracefully reminiscent of Bécquer's Rima X. Two more figures in bronze, representing 'love wounded' (or Eros) and 'love that hurts' (or Cupid), complement the work. It is suggested that several pieces were lost to vandalism over the years and replaced with replicas. There is also a niche for books nearby, though it was destroyed in an April 2022 vandalism incident.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons