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The merchants
Merchants did their deals in the cathedral until a building was made for them
In 1572 Philip II commissioned Juan de Herrera, the architect of the Escorial, to design a building for the merchants' guild. Until then, the merchants of Seville had been in the habit of retreating to the cool recesses of the cathedral to transact business.
Slow work
The building took from 1584 to 1646 to finish
The building, known as the Lonja, was begun in 1584 by Juan de Mijares, using Herrera's plans. Construction paused in 1601 because of funding problems and resumed in 1609. It was not finished until 1646.
Murillo
After a plague the merchants left, and Murillo started a painting academy
After a devastating plague in 1649, the merchants appear to have abandoned the building by 1660. From 1660 to 1674 one of its rooms was used as a painting academy established by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo. By the 18th century the upper floor had been partitioned into apartments.
An idea
A historian's letter of 1784 started the archive
On 12 March 1784 the historian Juan Bautista Muñoz wrote to José de Gálvez suggesting a centralized archive for documents on the Americas. Muñoz toured the old Lonja that May and found it solidly built of stone with plenty of space. In February 1785 Charles III approved a decree creating the archive.
Cartloads
Documents were gathered from three places under one roof
The project was to bring together under a single roof all the documentation on the overseas empire, which had been held in various repositories, including Simancas, Cádiz and Seville. The first cartloads of documents arrived in October 1785, and a grand marble staircase was added in 1787.
Day 3, midday
It comes after Casa de Pilatos. Then Metropol Parasol.
More stories from this trip idea
The words are a retelling of the Wikipedia article General Archive of the Indies, and are shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. They are checked against those articles, and a fact that is not in them is left out.