Palacio de San Telmo - Seville

The Palacio de San Telmo is one of Seville's most impressive buildings with its Ionic columns and distinctive facade.

Palacio San Telmo was built in 1682 to serve as a maritime school for the training of captains, navigators and high-ranking officers – it is named after San Telmo (Saint Elmo), the patron saint of seafarers . The academy subsequently became a royal palace , whose private domain extended as far as the Parque Maria Luisa, and then a seminary and a hospital .

The palace fell into disrepair in the mid-20th century, but was refurbished in the 1980s and is now the presidential headquarters of the Junta de Andalucia (the regional government). The President of the Junta received the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall here during their visit to Seville in April 2011.

The main feature of the palace is the elaborate stone portal on the main facade , overlooking the Avenida de Roma and the Jardines del Cristina. This was built by three generations of the Figueroa family, as it took more than 70 years to complete. Around the columns you see female allegorical figures representing the arts and sciences. San Telmo holds a ship and cards, flanked by the sword-bearing San Fernando (patron saint of Seville, whose statue you can also see in Plaza Nueva).

This massive building, painted in distinctive red and dark yellow, covers an entire city block. It faces Avenida de Roma and its walled gardens stretch along Paseo de las Delicias, which runs parallel to the river, all the way to Calle de la Rabida.

In 1980, the palace was renovated for 40 million euros after it had fallen into disrepair in the last century, partly due to a major fire in 1952.

Willem Vandenameele