La Lonja de la Seda

The Lonja was built from 1482 under Pere Compte as a place to trade silk and settle contracts, and it was designed to impress merchants arriving from abroad. The main hall is a single room of eight twisted columns that rise without capitals and open into ribbed vaulting, so the effect is closer to a stone plantation than a warehouse. An inscription runs around the walls reminding traders to deal honestly. Upstairs, the hall of the sea consulate carries a gilded coffered ceiling moved here from the old city hall. A courtyard of orange trees separates the two wings, and the exterior gargoyles are worth a slow circuit.

History

An earlier exchange of the 14th century, the Oil Exchange, stood behind the present building, and as Valencia's trade peaked in the 15th century the city built a new one, modelled on the exchange of Palma de Mallorca built by Guillem Sagrera in 1448. Pere Compte raised its main body, the Trading Hall, in just fifteen years, from 1483 to 1498, as a Latin inscription in golden letters around its walls records while urging merchants to trade honestly, and the whole building went up between 1482 and 1533. Its side wing housed the Consolat del Mar, the first maritime merchant tribunal formed in Spain, which sometimes locked up merchants for debt in the central tower (Wikipedia, Lonja de la Seda).

The main sights

• The trading hall - spiral columns branching into vaulting across one undivided room.
• The Consulado del Mar ceiling - a gilded coffered ceiling brought from another building.
• The orange courtyard - a small walled garden between the wings.
• The gargoyles - carved figures around the outside, several of them frankly rude.

When to go

Any season works since almost everything is indoors and Valencia stays mild. Mornings are best because the market opposite is trading and the two make a natural pair. Municipal sites here often close early in the afternoon and keep reduced Sunday hours, so treat mid-morning as the safe slot.

Before you go

It is essentially one great hall plus a couple of rooms, and an hour is genuinely enough. There is little furniture or interpretation, so the emptiness reads as bare unless the architecture holds you. The square outside is a busy crossroads with delivery traffic, and the building shares its area with the market crowds all morning.

Nearby

The Central Market, the cathedral and Santos Juanes church, and the Turia gardens.

Key facts