By Isla Quinn
Stone that looks like rope. That is the first thing to know about the main hall of the Lonja de la Seda in Valencia: its slender columns spiral upward like twisted cord and open into the vault overhead. UNESCO calls them helical pillars. Wikipedia calls them twisted columns. Both are describing the same room, and both are right.
The building
According to Wikipedia, the Lonja is a late Valencian Gothic civil building, built between 1482 and 1533, with the architect Pere Compte named for the main Trading Hall. The Trading Hall itself went up in fifteen years, from 1483 to 1498. The same article says other construction and decoration carried on until 1548, so its own dates do not quite agree with each other. We show both and do not choose. It adds that the design was derived from the Lonja of Palma de Mallorca, built by Guillem Sagrera in 1448.
The complex has three parts and a courtyard, Wikipedia says. The Trading Hall, also called the Hall of Columns, is where merchants negotiated contracts. A blue band with a golden inscription runs along its four walls. Next door is the Pavilion of the Consulate, seat of the Consolat del Mar, described by Wikipedia as the first marine merchant tribunal formed in Spain. Its Consulate Room has a gilded, polychrome coffered ceiling from the fifteenth century, according to the Visit València tourism site. A tower and chapel complete the group, and the Orange Tree Courtyard is the quiet part.
Visit València counts eight helical stone columns in the hall. Wikipedia gives no number. We use the tourism site’s figure as its own.
What UNESCO says
The site was inscribed in 1996, reference 782, under criteria i and iv. For criterion i, UNESCO describes it as a “masterpiece of European Gothic art” and a temple of commerce with a unique architectural and symbolic programme. For criterion iv, it calls it an outstanding example of a late Gothic secular building that shows the power and wealth of the great Mediterranean mercantile cities. The hall also housed the Taula de Canvis, the city’s first municipal bank, created in 1407, UNESCO says.
Why a silk exchange
UNESCO’s text says the complex was built to serve the silk trade, which gave it the name Silk Exchange, and that it was later used for oil and then for grain. Wikipedia words it differently: La Lonja functioned as a silk exchange in later centuries. The two sources disagree about when silk came in, and we report both.
The silk quarter
The silk did not stop at the Lonja door. Visit València’s blog says Arabs introduced silkworms and mulberry growing in the eighth century, that peasants raised silkworms on reed frames called andanas, and that master velvet weavers settled in the Velluters neighbourhood. It estimates 5,000 looms there at the peak in the eighteenth century. The regional tourism board is vaguer and says “thousands of looms”. The blog says the industry flourished from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century and declined through automation and silkworm epidemics; the tourism board says it peaked in the fifteenth and eighteenth.
Today a Silk Museum occupies the fifteenth-century home of the silk guild, the Colegio del Arte Mayor de la Seda, in the Velluters district. Visit València says the building was the headquarters of the velvet weavers’ guild. A craft information page adds eighteenth-century looms and a Jacquard loom demonstration, and both it and Visit València describe the guild archive as the most important of its kind in Europe. That is the museum’s claim, and we repeat it as theirs.
The same blog says only three artisan weavers of espolín, a hand-woven figured silk, remain in Valencia. We do not name them. Our reading: if that is accurate, the silk story is closer to a living craft than to a closed chapter, but it is a small one.
Dates in order
- 8th century: Arabs introduce silkworms and mulberry growing, according to Visit València’s blog.
- 1482 to 1533: the Lonja is built, according to Wikipedia.
- 1483 to 1498: the Trading Hall is built, according to Wikipedia.
- 18th century: peak of the looms in Velluters, according to Visit València’s blog and the regional tourism board.
- 1996: UNESCO inscription, according to UNESCO.
Side by side
Wikipedia names Pere Compte for the main hall, while the Visit València page credits him with the tower’s spiral staircase and names no main architect. Our reading: these are differences of emphasis, and a building this old collects several stories.
What kind of sources these are
UNESCO’s World Heritage listing; Wikipedia, which anyone can edit; two tourism sites, one from the city and one from the regional government, both promotional by nature; and a craft information page. We read no archive or scholarly paper.
What we left out
We left out opening hours, entry details and transport. We left out the sculpture descriptions and the chapel’s iconography, and the guild’s patron saint, because we did not read a source that covered them well.
Quick answers
When was the Lonja de la Seda built? According to Wikipedia, between 1482 and 1533, with the Trading Hall built from 1483 to 1498. The same article says other work continued until 1548.
Is the Lonja a UNESCO site? Yes. UNESCO’s own listing says it was inscribed in 1996 under criteria i and iv.
Why is it called the Silk Exchange? UNESCO says the complex was built to serve the silk trade, which gave it the name. Wikipedia says it served as a silk exchange in later centuries.
Roam first. Shop later.
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