I become a tourist - the lead in...

 We will start with a bit of background. There are things we have not done or seen in our adopted city despite the fact that we have been here since February 14, 2023. LOL well that is kind of true but misleading as we had to stay in the States from our return in late April until our visas were issued in early December 2023.  Since then we have been here more than anywhere else in the entire world....

Our fist year in residence here we had a busy calendar of folks visiting but we are not tour guides so we sent folks off for their own touring with a few recommended "don't miss" sites and made a ton of dinner reservations. So last year I told Phil I was gong to do touring Thursdays because we had various regular activities MWF. It was a plan that remained a plan only LOL. 

So cut to the chase- There are a number of well known palacio and casa here in Sevilla that we have not seen. Since Phil is away I figured it would be a perfect time to visit these places. So I booked for partial days of touring the following sites - in this order

1. Casa de Pilatos

2. Palacio Las Duenas

3. Palacio de La Condesa de Lebrija

4. Casa des Salinas

So up first Casa de Pilatos which I visited yesterday afternoon in the heat of an inordinately hot day. I didn't check the real feel because it was 87*. I know myself well enough to know I am not an early riser so I booked tickets for 1PM for the main floor and 3 PM for the guided (only) tour of the private rooms upstairs.  The casa is located a 25 minute walk from our place so I  took it slowly (the heat!) and took a few photos along the way-

Gentlemen! this store - serving customers for 120 years - clearly sees an upcoming trend in classic sunglasses as the accessory of the season. Don't wait! Be a trendsetter with these looks for fall.  Or at least get yourself a damned nice pair of sunglasses.

I also stopped for a cafe con leche along the way at about half way - at Catalina La Barra. Where they were readying for the lunch crowd and had their fresh fish all laid out for inspection.

Then I soldiered on to the casa (this is an area where the "sidewalk" is narrower than I am wide) and has a steady stream of traffic into the city center from the train station. In any event, I arrived 45 minutes after leaving home and just a minute before the 1PM ticket for the main floor.  The ladies at the front desk told me I could do the upper floor first as there was an English tour leaving right now from the top of the stairs so one of them quickly escorted me to the stairs and I got there just in time. 

So here is a bit of Wikipedia historical perspective...

La Casa de Pilatos (Pilate's House) is an Andalusian palace in Seville, Spain, which serves as the permanent residence of the Dukes of Medinaceli. It is an example of an Italian Renaissance building with Mudéjar elements and decorations. It is considered the prototype of the Andalusian palace.

The Casa de Pilatos has around 150 different azulejo (Spanish glazed tile) designs made in the 1530s by the brothers Diego and Juan Pulido, one of the largest early-modern azulejo collections in the world. 

The construction of this palace, which is adorned with precious azulejo tiles and well-kept gardens, was begun in 1483 by Pedro Enríquez de Quiñones, Adelantado Mayor of Andalucía, and his wife Catalina de Rivera, founder of the Casa de Alcalá, and completed by Pedro's son Fadrique Enríquez de Rivera (first Marquis of Tarifa), whose pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1519 led to the building being given the name "Pilate's House".

Popular imagination has since mistakenly identified the palace as a copy of the house of Pilate; thus the rooms have been named along the theme of the Passion of Christ: "Hall of the Praetorian", "Chapel of the Flagellations", etc. It was declared a National Monument in 1931. The oldest documentation of the name Casa de Pilatos is from 1754.

In the 16th century, the architect Benvenuto Tortello was responsible for rebuilding the palace leaving the old Mudéjar rooms intact. A staircase to the top floor is decorated with azulejo tiling and a ceiling of Mudéjar honeycomb, made by Cristobal Sanchez. The rooms on this floor include major paintings dating from the 16th to the 19th centuries, including the Pietà by Sebastiano del Piombo.

so off we go to the private rooms upstairs - my FB review: Up the main staircase, the rooms of the residents awaited us. The casa was occupied by family well into the 21st century. The rooms had a variety of decorating styles depending upon the resident and time period of renovations. Although interesting, the real centerpiece of this casa (palacio) was the gardens of the main floor and the tile work throughout the main floor and in the staircase (which you can view up to the gate to private quarters.). The number of rooms is limited and nothing that struck me as particularly worthy of a separate entrance ticket. Just my opinion. I did like the view across the street to the Plaza Pilatos. And the flowers on the terrace also made for nice photos.

 a view of the Plaza Pilatos from the upper floor 

paintings of the casa 

we left the upper floor tour (it's roughly 30-35 minutes long) and went to the main floor where there is an audio guide (on your own phone via a QR code and you can continue on at your leisure. I was very happy I had stopped on the way to the Casa for a bottle of water so I sat for a while in the shade in the courtyard and had a long drink - not cool but long...LOL