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The General Archive of the Indies is housed in the former Casa Lonja de Mercaderes, the merchants' exchange, a restrained and harmonious Renaissance building designed in the sixteenth century in the style of the royal architect Juan de Herrera. In 1785 King Charles the Third ordered that the scattered documents of Spain's overseas empire be gathered under one roof, and this building was chosen. Today it holds one of the most important historical archives in the world: some eighty million pages across tens of thousands of bundles, filling kilometres of shelving. Among its treasures are letters and documents in the hand of Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan, Hernán Cortés and other explorers and conquistadors, the papal decrees dividing the New World, and the administrative record of three centuries of Spanish rule across the Americas and the Pacific. It, too, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Fatti principali
- 1785 year — King Charles III ordered the empire's documents gathered here under one roof
- 80000000 pages — Of documents fill the archive, recording Spain's rule across the Americas
- 9 km — Of shelving hold the bundles of imperial records
📍 Avenida de la Constitución 3, 41004, Sevilla