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Archivo General de Indias

 
Archivo General De Indias

 
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Archivo General de Indias
 
 
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The Archivo General de Indias ("General Archive of the Indies") is the document repository, housed in Seville
Seville

||-||}Seville is the artistic, cultural, and financial capital of southern Spain. It is the capital of Andalusia and of the province of Seville ....
 in the ancient merchants' exchange, the Casa Lonja de Mercaderes, of extremely valuable archival documents illustrating the history of the Spanish Empire
Spanish Empire

The Spanish Empire was one of the largest empires in world history, and one of the first global empires. It included territories and colonies ruled by Spain in Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania between the 15th and late 19th centuries....
 in the Americas and the Philippines. The General Archive of the Indies is housed in a structure designed by Juan de Herrera
Juan de Herrera

Juan de Herrera was a Spain architect, mathematician and geometrician.One of the most outstanding Spanish architects in the 16th century, Herrera represents the peak of the Spanish Renaissance....
, an unusually serene and Italianate Spanish example of Renaissance architecture
Renaissance architecture

Renaissance architecture is the architecture of the period between the early 15th and early 17th centuries in different regions of Europe, in which there was a conscious revival and development of certain elements of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome thought and material culture....
.






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The Archivo General de Indias ("General Archive of the Indies") is the document repository, housed in Seville
Seville

||-||}Seville is the artistic, cultural, and financial capital of southern Spain. It is the capital of Andalusia and of the province of Seville ....
 in the ancient merchants' exchange, the Casa Lonja de Mercaderes, of extremely valuable archival documents illustrating the history of the Spanish Empire
Spanish Empire

The Spanish Empire was one of the largest empires in world history, and one of the first global empires. It included territories and colonies ruled by Spain in Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania between the 15th and late 19th centuries....
 in the Americas and the Philippines. The General Archive of the Indies is housed in a structure designed by Juan de Herrera
Juan de Herrera

Juan de Herrera was a Spain architect, mathematician and geometrician.One of the most outstanding Spanish architects in the 16th century, Herrera represents the peak of the Spanish Renaissance....
, an unusually serene and Italianate Spanish example of Renaissance architecture
Renaissance architecture

Renaissance architecture is the architecture of the period between the early 15th and early 17th centuries in different regions of Europe, in which there was a conscious revival and development of certain elements of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome thought and material culture....
. The building and its contents were registered in 1987 by UNESCO
UNESCO

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations established on 16 November 1945....
 as a World Heritage Site
World Heritage Site

A UNESCO World Heritage Site is a site that is on the list maintained by the international World Heritage Programme administered by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, composed of 21 Sovereign state which are elected by their General Assembly for a four-year term....
.

The origin of the structure dates to 1572 when Philip II
Philip II of Spain

Philip II was King of Spain from 1556 until 1598, List of monarchs of Naples from 1554 until 1598, king consort of England, as husband of Mary I of England, from 1554 to 1558, lord of the Seventeen Provinces from 1556 until 1581, holding various titles for the individual territories, such as Duke or Count; and King of Portugal as Philip I...
 commissioned the building in from Juan de Herrera
Juan de Herrera

Juan de Herrera was a Spain architect, mathematician and geometrician.One of the most outstanding Spanish architects in the 16th century, Herrera represents the peak of the Spanish Renaissance....
, the architect of the Escorial to house the Consulado de mercaderes of Seville. The merchants of Seville had been in the habit of retreating to the cool recesses of the cathedral to transact business.

The building encloses a large central patio with ranges of two storeys, the windows set in slightly sunken panels between flat pilasters. Plain square tablets float in the space above each window. The building is surmounted by a balustrade, with rusticated obelisk
Obelisk

An obelisk An Obelisks is a tall, narrow, four-sided, tapering monument which ends in a pyramid like shape at the top. Ancient obelisks were made of a single piece of stone, a monolith; however, most modern obelisks are made of individual stones, and can even have interior spaces....
s standing at the corners. There is no sculptural decoration, only the discreetly contrasting tonalities of stone and stucco, and the light shadows cast by the slight relief of the pilasters against their piers, by the cornices, and by the cornice strips that cap each window.

The building was begun in 1584 by Juan de Mijares, working to Herrera's plans, and was ready for use in 1598, according to an inscription on the north façade. Work on completing the structure proceeded through the 17th century, directed until 1629 by the archbishop Juan de Zumárraga
Juan de Zumárraga

Juan de Zum?rraga was a Spain Basque people Franciscan prelate and first bishop of Mexico.Zum?rraga was born in Durango, Spain in the Biscay province in the Basque Country ....
 and finished by Pedro Sanchez Falconete
Pedro Sanchez Falconete

Pedro Sanchez Falconete was a Spanish architect of Seville, the completer of the palatial urban structure that houses the Archivo General de Indias in the city....
.

In 1785, by decree of Charles III
Charles III of Spain

Charles III was list of Spanish monarchs 1759?88 , King of Kingdom of Naples and Kingdom of Sicily 1735?59 , and Duchy of Parma 1732?35 . He was a proponent of enlightened absolutism....
 the archives of the Council of the Indies were to be housed here, in order to bring together under a single roof all the documentation regarding the overseas empire, which until that time had been dispersed among various archives, as Simancas
Simancas

Simancas is a town and municipality of central Spain, located in the province of Valladolid , part of the autonomous community of Castile-Leon....
, Cádiz
Cádiz

C?diz is a city and port in southwestern Spain. It is the capital of the province of C?diz, one of eight which make up the Autonomous communities of Spain of Andalusia....
 and Seville. Responsibility for the project was delegated to José de Gálvez y Gallardo
José de Gálvez

Jos? de G?lvez y Gallardo, marqu?s de Sonora was a Spanish lawyer, a colonial official in New Spain and ultimately Minister of the Indies . He was one of the prime figures behind the Bourbon Reforms....
, Secretary for the Indies, who depended on the historian Juan Bautista Muñoz for the plan's execution. Two basic motivation underlay the project; in addition to the lack of space in the Archivo General de Simancas the central archive of the Spanish Crown, was the expectation, in the spirit of the Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment

The Age of Enlightenment or The Enlightenment is a term used to describe a time in Western philosophy and cultural life centered upon the eighteenth century, in which rationalism was advocated as the primary source and legitimacy for authority....
, that Spanish historians would take up the history of Spain's colonial empire. It was decided that documents evolved after 1760 would for the time being, remain with their primary institutions.

The first of the documents arrived in October 1785. Some restructuring of the Casa Lonja to accommodate the materials was required, and a grand marble staircase was added, to designs of Lucas Cintara in 1787.

The archives are rich with autograph material from the first of the Conquistador
Conquistador

Conquistador is the name given to the Spaniards soldiers, leaders, List of explorers, and adventurers involved in the conquest of the Americas following the discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus in 1492....
s to the end of the 19th century. Here are Miguel de Cervantes
Miguel de Cervantes

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was a Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright. His magnum opus, Don Quixote, considered the first modern novel by many, is a classic of Western literature and is regularly regarded among the best novels ever written....
' request for an official post, the Bull
Papal bull

A Papal bull is a particular type of letters patent or charter issued by a pope. It is named after the bulla that was appended to the end to authenticate it....
 of Demarcation Inter caetera
Inter caetera

Inter caetera was a papal bull issued by Pope Alexander VI on 4 May 1493, which granted to Spain all lands to the "west and south" of a pole-to-pole line 100 League s west and south of any of the islands of the Azores or the Cape Verde Islands....
 of Pope Alexander VI
Pope Alexander VI

Pope Alexander VI , born Roderic Llan?ol, later Roderic de Borja i Borja was Pope from 1492 to 1503. He is the most controversial of the Secularism popes of the Renaissance, and his surname became a byword for the debased standards of the papacy of that era....
 that divided the world between Spain and Portugal, the journal of Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus was a Republic of Genoa navigator, colonialist and explorer whose voyages across the Atlantic Ocean?funded by Queen Isabella of Spain?led to general European awareness of the America in the Western Hemisphere....
, maps and plans of the colonial American cities, in addition to the ordinary archives that reveal the month-to-month workings of the whole vast colonial machinery, which have been mined by every Spanish historian in the last two centuries.

Today the Archivo General de Indias houses some nine kilometers of shelving, in 43,000 volumes and some 80 million pages, which were produced by the colonial administration:
  • Consejo de Indias, 16th-19th centuries
  • Casa de la Contratación, 16th-18th centuries
  • Consulados de Sevilla y Cádiz, 16th-19th centuries
  • Secretarías de Estado y Despacho Universal de Indias, de Estado, Gracia y Justicia, Hacienda y Guerra, 18th-19th centuries
  • Secretaría del Juzgado de Arribadas de Cádiz, 18th-19th centuries
  • Comisaría Interventora de la Hacienda Pública de Cádiz, Dirección General de la Renta de Correos, 18th-19th centuries
  • Sala de Ultramar del Tribunal de Cuentas, 19th century
  • Real Compañía de la Habana, 18th-19th centuries


The structure underwent a thorough restoration in 2002–2004, without interrupting its function as a research library. , its 15 million pages are in the process of being digitized.