Las Dueñas Palace

Las Dueñas Palace was the residence of the Dukes of Alba. It was built in Seville between the 15th and 16th centuries and was founded by the Pineda family who had to sell it to Doña Catalina de Ribera in 1484 to recover Don Juan de Pineda, who had been taken prisoner by the Moors.

Its name comes from the monastery of Santa María de las Dueñas, which was known as the Compañía de Dueñas. The palace is made up of a group of courtyards and buildings. It ranges from Gothic-Mudéjar to the Renaissance, containing samples and details with traditional Sevillian elements in the bricks, roof tiles, wall tiles, whitewashing and ceramics. It has a typical Andalusian patio, just like the Casa Pilatos, and large spaces predominate to accentuate its overall majesty.

At the entrance to the palace you will see the coat of arms of the Duchy of Alba with tiles in the main arch made in Triana in the 17th and 18th century.

Las Dueñas Palace has a patio surrounded by arches with white marble columns that support pilasters with Plateresque ornaments that also include a Plateresque frieze. Above this gallery another was built with arches in the Mudejar style.

The arch located to the west of the patio in the lower galleries is also in the Plateresque style. The main altar in the chapel contains a number of tiles with metallic reflections, typical of Sevillian ceramics from the 16th century.

The dominant feature of the upper floor of the palace is a salon that has an octagonal gilt panelled ceiling that rests on woodwork painted in the renaissance style. One of the main attractions of the Las Dueñas Palace is the important collection of artworks that it contains, mainly Spanish paintings from the 19th and 20th centuries, although there are also some earlier pieces, by Bassano (Los Cacharreros), Francesco Furini (The Creation of Eva) and a Virgin by Neri di Bicci (that stands over the altar in the chapel)