Universidad de Sevilla - Rectorado

Universidad de Sevilla - Rectorado stands in Seville as a vast stone building, formerly the Royal Tobacco Factory. Its Renaissance plan and Herrerian details shape a rectangle with courtyards, façades, a ditch, and sentry boxes. Morón de la Frontera supplied the stone after an earlier choice proved too fragile. Today, the university headquarters occupies a place that once dominated European tobacco production.

Construction began in the eighteenth century under Sebastián Van der Borcht and several other architects and engineers. Tobacco from Virginia and the Spanish colonies passed through its mills, producing snuff and later cigars. Thousands of women known as cigarreras eventually made cigars here, inspiring Carmen and appearing in paintings by Gonzalo Bilbao. The interior changed for university life, while the exterior preserves the building’s industrial character and the memory of Seville’s tobacco trade.