Hotel Las Casas de El Arenal

To create this unique hotel, Las Casas de El Arenal, architect Luís Fernando Gómez-Stern has carried out a project to renovate and refurbish the buildings that make up the hotel, houses nos. 14 and 16, dating from the 18th century, with three floors and a façade framed by pilasters. These have been meticulously restored, maintaining and respecting all the characteristic construction elements of the period, through repair or replacement. This restoration has recovered two of the most significant houses in the El Arenal neighbourhood, which, joined together through their courtyards and galleries, create a unique and singular space, where the restoration has brought back all the splendour of the purest Sevillian architectural style. Its elegant façade conceals a traditional architecture of high architectural value.

The El Arenal neighbourhood is a reminder of a seafaring and colonial Seville that no longer exists. It was from El Arenal that the great fleets set sail for the New World, and it was to El Arenal that the fabulous cargoes and treasures arrived, making the city a place of pilgrimage and a port of refuge for merchants, rogues and adventurers from all over the globe.

Strolling through this neighbourhood, we can recall the centuries of splendour of Seville during the Golden Age, the economic and cultural heart of Spain during its heyday. The birth of El Arenal is mainly due to the Viking invasion in the 9th century. They arrived in Seville in 844 and sacked it. The Muslims of Abd-ar-Rahman II decided that the city had to be walled to prevent further invasions.

Once the defensive wall was built, a strip of land near the river remained unprotected and without buildings. Over the centuries, this site would become home to a secluded and diverse world sheltered by the shipyards and the entire maritime industry that Abderramán II would set in motion. This humble origin of El Arenal would eventually give the city of Seville a privileged area, as all the new discoveries brought from America would pass through here, and from here would depart the large number of ruffians, adventurers and men without fortune who built the New World.

In the 13th century, the Torre del Oro, the Torre de la Plata and the Torre de Abdelaziz were built to prevent possible invasions from the Guadalquivir. After the reconquest of Seville by King Ferdinand III the Saint, an area with privileges and exemptions was created in the neighbourhood of La Mar, where sailors, coopers, basket makers, cartwrights, etc. carried out the main activity of the future Seville outside the city walls: the construction of ships and the transport of goods in the most important and populous city in Spain. Alfonso X the Wise ordered the construction of the shipyards and centralised the Admiralty of the Castilian fleets here, as it was a strategic port where the Atlantic and Mediterranean routes converged. This is why the sailors who lived in the neighbourhoods of La Carretería and La Cestería (i.e. the seaside neighbourhood, which covered the whole of El Arenal) were men from the north, mainly from Santander.

After the discovery of America, Seville became the Port and Gateway to the Indies in 1503, when it was granted a monopoly on American trade. El Arenal was an industrious suburb of Seville, an area between the seafaring and transient that had grown unexpectedly alongside the walled and happy Seville, which was then called Hispanic Athens. This is where the rejects of the peninsula, the galley slaves, rogues and hustlers who fled a weary and poor Castile, would end up. Cervantes arrived in Seville hoping to make amends after so many years of imprisonment and heroism under the Spanish flag.

In the 18th century, during the reign of Charles III, the Maestranza de Artillería (Artillery Armoury) and the new Casa de la Moneda (Mint) were built on the site of the old shipyards. The Royal Cavalry Order was also built to give free rein to a passion that has gripped the Spanish since the ancient times of the Iberian people: bullfighting and bulls.

Over time, the port of Seville lost its importance. In the 19th century, the wall separating El Arenal from Seville disappeared and the Paseo Colón was developed thanks to Pastor y Landero. The maritime tradition of El Arenal slowly disappeared, becoming just another neighbourhood outside the city walls. The Sal dock was replaced by the Nueva York dock, and successive city expansions, such as the Ibero-American Exhibition of 1929, gradually displaced the old seaside suburb to the south.

This area is also where Seville finds much of its operatic tradition. Opposite the Casa de la Moneda, near Avenida de la Constitución, is where tradition places the house of the Barber of Seville, Figaro. There is also the Plaza de Toros de la Maestranza, belonging to the city's Royal Cavalry Order, where scenes from Carmen, the cigarette girl of Seville, take place. There is also the Hospital de la Caridad, founded by the venerable Miguel de Mañara, who also has operas in his honour, as well as others dedicated to Don Juan Tenorio. In the 1990s, the neighbourhood was chosen as the site for the Teatro de la Maestranza, Seville's opera house. The churches located in the surrounding area are the Chapel of La Carretería, the Chapel of El Baratillo, the Chapel of La Real Maestranza de Caballería, the Church of the Hospital de la Caridad, the Brotherhood of El Santísimo Cristo de las Aguas and the Chapel of La Concepción, which is located next to the Postigo del Aceite.

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