Lonja de la Seda

Eight slender columns twist upward like ropes of stone and, at about 11 m, open into ribbed vaults that cover the great trading hall of Valencia's Silk Exchange some 17 m above the floor. The Lonja de la Seda, or Llotja de la Seda in Valencian, is one of the finest secular buildings of the late Gothic period in Europe, and UNESCO inscribed it on the World Heritage List in 1996 as an exceptional expression of the wealth of a great Mediterranean trading city.

The project was first drawn up around 1470–1471 by the master builder Francesc Baldomar. After his death his pupils Pere Compte and Joan Ivarra were commissioned in 1481 to carry it out, and the complex was built between 1482 and 1533. Its model was the exchange in Palma de Mallorca by Guillem Sagrera, but Valencia's version is larger and far richer in ornament: flamboyant tracery in the windows, ogee-arched portals framed by tall pinnacles, battlements along the roofline, and twenty-eight gargoyles, many of them satirical or openly erotic. Inside the Hall of Columns, three aisles by five bays, the ribs spring from the spiral shafts and multiply across the nearly domed vaults; the ceiling was originally painted blue and scattered with gold stars, so the room has often been read as a grove of palm trees under the night sky. A band of gold Latin lettering runs around the top of the walls, stating that the building rose in fifteen years and reminding merchants that honest trade, free of deceit and usury, leads to eternal life.

The complex has three built parts around a walled courtyard of orange trees. Beside the trading hall rises a tower whose ground floor served as a chapel and whose upper floors held a prison for defaulting merchants and silk thieves. The third wing housed the Consulate of the Sea, the tribunal that judged maritime and commercial disputes; it was completed in the first half of the 16th century and shows the arrival of Renaissance forms. Valencia was then at the height of its 15th-century golden age as the commercial capital of the Crown of Aragon, and for centuries afterwards the building served as the city's silk exchange. It stands on the Plaza del Mercado in the old centre of Valencia, Spain's third-largest city, facing the Central Market and the church of the Santos Juanes.

Getting there

The Lonja is in the historic centre of Valencia, on the Plaza del Mercado. Valencia Airport (VLC) lies about 9 km to the west in a straight line.