The story of this place
Housed in a stern Renaissance merchants' exchange beside Seville Cathedral, the Archivo General de Indias was created in 1785 by Charles III to gather the scattered records of Spain's American empire under one roof. Its shelves run some eight kilometres and hold around 43,000 volumes and 80 million pages: Columbus's own handwriting, the papal bull dividing the New World, Magellan's expedition papers, the accounts of conquistadors and viceroys, maps, lawsuits and slavery ledgers. Historians of the Americas from Mexico to the Philippines still make pilgrimages here. The building itself, designed by El Escorial's architect Juan de Herrera, is a monument to bureaucratic empire.