Casa de Pilatos: Mudéjar, Gothic and Renaissance in One Palace
Why is it significant?
Stand in front of the white marble gateway, carved in Italy and set into a plain wall, and notice how little it tells you about what lies behind. That is the Seville way: a quiet street front, and inside, a world. This is the Casa de Pilatos, the palace of the Enríquez de Ribera family.
Key Facts
| Place | Casa de Pilatos: Mudéjar, Gothic and Renaissance in One Palace |
|---|---|
| Address | Plaza de Pilatos 1, 41003 Sevilla, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 37.39020, -5.98720 |
| Part of Walk | From Baroque Domes to Las Setas: Seville's Architecture Between Sierpes and Casa de Pilatos |
| Generated | Generated |
Stand in front of the white marble gateway, carved in Italy and set into a plain wall, and notice how little it tells you about what lies behind. That is the Seville way: a quiet street front, and inside, a world.
This is the Casa de Pilatos, the palace of the Enríquez de Ribera family. It was begun at the end of the fifteenth century by Pedro Enríquez and his wife Catalina de Ribera, and completed by their son Fadrique, the Marquis of Tarifa. In 1518 Fadrique set out on a long journey through Italy to Jerusalem, and came back two years later with his head full of Renaissance palaces and holy places.
Here is where the name comes from. After his return, Fadrique established a Way of the Cross that started from his house and ended at a shrine outside the city called the Cruz del Campo. Legend soon claimed the distance matched the walk from Pontius Pilate's palace to Calvary, and that the house copied Pilate's own. There is no evidence for either, but Sevillians have called it the House of Pilate ever since.
Inside, the main courtyard is a marvel of fusion. Mudéjar plaster lace runs over the arches, Gothic balustrades line the gallery, a Renaissance fountain splashes in the middle, and Roman statues stand in the corners. And the walls are covered in sixteenth-century glazed tiles, with patterns so varied that the palace holds one of the largest collections of its kind anywhere. Upstairs, the painter Francisco Pacheco, teacher of Velázquez, decorated a ceiling with the apotheosis of Hercules in 1603.
It still belongs to the Dukes of Medinaceli, heirs of the Enríquez de Ribera, and it keeps an atmosphere museums rarely have, of a family home that happens to be five hundred years old. When you are ready, walk north through the lanes to a church that spent years hidden behind scaffolding.