Palacio de Lebrija: A House Paved with Roman Mosaics
Why is it significant?
Peer through the wrought-iron gate from Calle Cuna into the cool hallway beyond, with its tiles and its glimpse of a courtyard. From the street it is an elegant town house like many others. Inside, it is something else entirely.
Key Facts
| Place | Palacio de Lebrija: A House Paved with Roman Mosaics |
|---|---|
| Address | Calle Cuna 8, 41004 Sevilla, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 37.39220, -5.99370 |
| Part of Walk | From Baroque Domes to Las Setas: Seville's Architecture Between Sierpes and Casa de Pilatos |
| Generated | Generated |
Peer through the wrought-iron gate from Calle Cuna into the cool hallway beyond, with its tiles and its glimpse of a courtyard. From the street it is an elegant town house like many others. Inside, it is something else entirely.
In 1901 the house was bought by Regla Manjón, Countess of Lebrija, a passionate collector with strong opinions about beauty. She set out to turn her home into a museum of everything she loved: Roman antiquity, Islamic decoration, Renaissance ceilings, Sevillian tiles. The house itself is centuries older, but over the next decades she reshaped it room by room, and today it is kept as a museum so that visitors can see it the way she left it.
And her boldest idea is under your feet once you step into the courtyard. The floor is a vast Roman mosaic, brought from the ruins of Itálica, the Roman city just outside Seville where the emperors Trajan and Hadrian had family roots. Gods, mythical scenes and geometric borders, laid by Roman craftsmen some eighteen hundred years ago, now paved a private patio. Mosaics continue through the surrounding rooms, alongside glass cases of ancient vases, coins and sculpture.
Today we would raise an eyebrow at a collector lifting mosaics from an archaeological site to decorate her home. Rules on heritage were very different then, and private collections were how much of Spain's past survived at all. The Countess's mosaics are intact, cared for and visible, which is more than can be said for many that stayed in the ground.
Look up as you climb the stairs, if you go in: the staircase is crowned by a Mudéjar wooden ceiling brought from a ducal palace in Marchena, another treasure moved here to be saved. Now walk back up Calle Cuna to the Plaza de la Encarnación, where the old and the new collide in the most spectacular way in Seville.