Almudí Palace

The Renaissance-style Almudí Palace, a historic building from the 15th century, is currently a municipal art centre and has magnificent exhibition rooms, with a stable and continuous programme. The building has undergone various modifications throughout its history

It is a unique building from the 15th century with an imposing appearance and a colonnaded courtyard that takes us back to Baroque Murcia. It was an old grain warehouse, the first idea of building a public warehouse in Murcia, for the cereals collected, as well as for the tithes is attributed to King Alfonso X the Wise, in the 13th century.

Its original structure caught fire in 1612 when lightning struck the powder magazine that was temporarily stored there and destroyed a large part of the building, which was later rebuilt.

This carving, emblematic of the city, is the representation of a woman, a midwife, breastfeeding a child next to her own, symbolising and paying tribute to the hospitality of the city of Murcia. The pelican crowning the relief is a symbol of abundance.

The main door of the Almudí Palace is crowned by an enormous royal coat of arms of the Habsburgs, flanked by two smaller coats of arms of Murcia, which have only six crowns as they predate the reign of Philip V, the monarch who granted the seventh crown to the city of Murcia.

In 1886 the building was converted into the Judicial Court, and today it houses the city archive, located on the first floor, where files and administrative documentation on Murcia and the huerta (market garden) have been kept since the 13th century.

Inside, there is a grandiose hall with Tuscan columns, which is currently used as an exhibition hall, and a stretch of the Arab wall that surrounded the city of Murcia, which serves as a load-bearing wall for the building itself, as the Almudí was built on top of this defensive construction.

References:

• Murcia Tourism

Address

Calle Plano de San Francisco 8, Murcia, Spain

Details

Founded: 15th century
Category: Palaces, manors and town halls in Spain