In Seville you will find many palatial houses, but none like ‘Pilate’s house’

It’s considered to be the best example of an Andalusian palace and of nobility Sevillian architecture. These houses or palaces are characterised by their great beauty inside, built around a large main courtyard (called Sevillian patios), around which the different rooms are distributed. However, from the outside they are practically unnoticeable, not even being able to guess their size. 

And in amongst these stately homes, clearly built as houses for the most privileged ranks of society, the highlight is Pilates’ house, which stands out for its artistic wealth. Owing to its construction between the 15^th and 16^th centuries, the art is predominantly a fusion between mudejar and renaissance which had just arrived in Spain via the inhabitants who were originally from the Bel Paese, (Italy).

Origin

Its construction was owed to a woman, Catalina de Ribera, as somewhere to settle in after her wedding with the governor of Andalusia, Pedro Enriquez. When years later, her husband died, it was her that took charge of the work and built it to her taste, with rich and spectacular decorations, meeting the standards of one of the richest families of the kingdom, like the family of Ribera was.

The name ‘Pilate’

Its name came from the heir of the palace, Fadrique Enriquez de Rivera, who had travelled to Jerusalem and discovered that the distance between Pontius Pilate’s house and the Golgotha was the same as from his palace to the ‘Cruz del Campo’, a shrine built in the outskirts of the city.  In fact, this coincidence gave place to the beginning of the stations of the cross which left from the palace and which some consider to be the beginnings of Semana Santa or Holy Week.

Returning from his journey, he brought with him the artistic tastes of the Italian cities he had seen on the journey, like Venice, Florence, Rome, and Genova. With the new construction work, the building became the second largest palace in the city, only coming after the Royal Alcazar.

In Film

For its beauty it has been chosen many times as a location for great productions of cinema and series, such as Lawrence of Arabia, the Kingdom of Heaven, Knight and Day and the famous Spanish Series La Peste (The Plague).

Images sources: 48 – 55 (section 2)