CIEE Study Center in Seville, Spain

The CIEE Study Center in Seville is located in a beautifully renovated Sevillano casa palacio built in 1725 in the former Jewish Quarter (known as the Barrio Santa Cruz). The building consists of 750 square meters (about 8,000 square feet) on three different floors.

The patio is by far the most beautiful part of the house, decorated with hand painted traditional ceramic tiles from the Seville neighborhood of Triana and surrounded by half pointed arches with classical columns. In the center of the patio there is a beautiful fountain which still functions after nearly 300 years!!

On the second floor of the building, there is even a small chapel of Arabic design. This is space is nondenominational now and is dedicated to quiet conversation and meditation.

In its original form, the casa palacio occupied the entire block which included the living area (the CIEE Center) and the stables for horses and animals. The “doors” on the back walls of the Center connected both parts of the building to the other side of the parallel street, Calle Virgnes. While these doors still exist on the ground and first floor in our Center, they are now closed up as the property was divided up and sold over the years.

The building was owned by a “respectable” noble sevillano family for centuries. From the mid 18th century the building also housed consular offices and the central office for a local mining company. Upon the proclamation of the Second Republic in 1931 and the end of the monarchy, the family left Spain. During this time period, leftist sentiments prevailed in Seville (notably anarchists and communists) and a local labor union rented the building. However, as the political tide became more conservative in Seville, rumor has it that a neighbor (a national deputy of the conservative Popular Action Party) forced the labor union out of the house in 1932.

The house remained unoccupied for a while and was ultimately divided into different working and living areas. The famous Sevillano architect Juan Talavera (1880-1960) restored the residential area of Munoz y Pabón in the 1930s, making it even more beautiful than its original 1725 construction. He lived in the house with his family on the second floor, set up his studio on the ground floor, and kept his interesting and respectable collection of maps and city plans on the top floor.

Juan Fernandez de la Cruz, a wealthy pharmacist from Galicia, purchased the house in 1947. He lived here with his wife and set up a very successful and popular pharmaceutical laboratory (Laboraborio Fernandez de la Cruz). Don Juan passed away in 1977 and left the property to his sister, Purificación Fernandez de la Cruz as his wife had already died and they had no children. Doña Purificacion died in 1999 and she left the property to her nieces as she also had no children.

Here are some photos showing the elegance of the home at this time.

This is the upstairs formal dining room

This is a view of the upstairs gallery.

CIEE acquired the property in 2002 and restored the building to accommodate classrooms and office space. The Center has seven classrooms and a computer laboratory, named and decorated after the different provinces of Andalucia: Sevilla, Huelva, Granada, Jaen, Malaga, Almeria, Cadiz, and Cordoba.

Here is an image of how the classrooms will look.

Staff Offices and meeting spaces are located on the top floor. Here is how the space looked when we entered the building.

This is what the top floor will look like when the reform is complete.

Below is an artistic rendition of how the patio will look when the CIEE Study Center in Seville is completed.

If you are in Seville during Semana Santa, there is one procession which passes right by the door of the Palacio. The Hermandad de la Candelaria leaves from the St. Nicolas Church on Holy Tuesday at about six in the afternoon. It takes about two hours to pass by the Palacio on Muñoz y Pabón. Do not miss the opportunity to experience this procession from the balconies of the Palacio during Easter Week.

Here is a side view of the Palacio and the street down which the procession will pass. There are three large balconies from which you can contemplate the images of the Christ and Virgin Mary during Easter.