Casa de Pilatos in Seville: tickets, hours and what to see

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The short answer

The Casa de Pilatos is the Seville palace of the Dukes of Medinaceli, and after the Real Alcázar, in our view, the finest palace you can visit in the city. It mixes Mudéjar plasterwork, Gothic vaults and Italian Renaissance marble around a large arcaded patio, and it has one of the most important collections of 16th-century tiles in Spain.

• Price: about €12 for the ground floor (patios, rooms and gardens), plus about €6 for the guided visit of the upper floor
• Time needed: 1 hour for the ground floor, about 1.5 hours with the upper floor
• Hours: daily, about 9:00 to 18:00
• Book ahead: usually not needed. It is far quieter than the Alcázar
• Where: Plaza de Pilatos 1, on the northern edge of Santa Cruz, about 12 minutes on foot from the cathedral

Opening hours and prices

Prices and hours are from the official website of the Fundación Casa Ducal de Medinaceli (fundacionmedinaceli.org), which also sells the tickets online. You can buy at the door too, as the palace rarely sells out.

Is there free entry?

For years the Casa de Pilatos let EU citizens in free on Monday afternoons, for the ground floor only, with an ID card or passport. Recent sources disagree on the exact hours and the official site does not mention it, so we’d treat it as a bonus rather than a plan. If you go, arrive early: the number of people inside is limited and a queue forms. See free things to do in Seville for other free sights.

Ground floor or upper floor?

The ground floor is the reason to come. Your ticket covers the entrance courtyard, the main patio, the Mudéjar rooms, the chapel, the grand staircase and the gardens, and you walk it at your own pace with the audio guide.

The upper floor is still partly lived in by the Medinaceli family, so it is shown only on a short guided visit in a small group. You see furnished family rooms, ceilings painted by Francisco Pacheco (Velázquez’s teacher and father-in-law), and paintings including small bullfighting scenes by Goya. Photos are usually not allowed upstairs.

Is it worth the extra €6? If you like paintings and period rooms, we think yes. If you mainly came for the tiles and patios, we’d skip it: the ground floor is the highlight. We’d buy the upper floor ticket when you arrive, as the group visits run at set times and you may have to wait for the next one.

Guided tour

A guide adds the family history, which is hard to follow from the audio guide alone. A Casa de Pilatos guided visit with tickets takes about 1.5 hours and costs from about €29. For more options, see guided tours in Seville.

What to see: a route through the house

1. Apeadero (entrance courtyard). You enter through a Renaissance marble gateway made in Genoa into a courtyard where carriages used to stop.

2. The main patio. The heart of the house: Mudéjar arches and plasterwork around a central Italian fountain, with four large classical statues in the corners (one of them an Athena) and a row of busts of Roman emperors in niches along the walls. Look down, too: the lower walls are covered in tiles.

   

3. The tiles. The Casa de Pilatos has about 150 different azulejo designs, most made in the 1530s by the Pulido brothers of Triana. They line the patio, the rooms and the staircase, and they are the main reason tile lovers come.

4. Salón del Pretorio and the Mudéjar rooms. Carved wooden ceilings, coats of arms and more plasterwork. The small chapel has Gothic ribbed vaults and is one of the oldest parts of the house.

5. The grand staircase. Covered in tiles and topped by a gilded wooden dome, it leads to the upper floor and is one of the best photo spots.

6. The gardens. The small garden and the large garden (Jardín Grande) have loggias, fountains, classical statues and bougainvillea. They are shaded and quiet, a good place to sit after the patio.

   

Why is it called “Pilate’s House”?

The palace was begun in 1483 by Pedro Enríquez and Catalina de Ribera and finished by their son Fadrique Enríquez de Ribera, first Marquis of Tarifa. In 1519 Fadrique made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Back in Seville, he started a Via Crucis (Stations of the Cross) in 1521 that ran from his house to the Cruz del Campo, a small temple outside the city walls. The route was said to match the distance from Pontius Pilate’s house to Calvary, so people began to call the palace the Casa de Pilatos. Pilate never had anything to do with Seville.

Later in the 16th century, Per Afán de Ribera, Viceroy of Naples, brought back the Roman and Italian sculptures that fill the patio and gardens. The house passed to the Medinaceli family, who still own it through their foundation. It was declared a National Monument in 1931.

Film locations

The palace has appeared in several films. The best known are Lawrence of Arabia (1962), where Lawrence meets General Allenby, 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992), Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven (2005), and Knight and Day (2010) with Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz. The Game of Thrones scenes in Seville were filmed at the Alcázar, not here.

Casa de Pilatos or the Alcázar?

If you only have one day, we’d see the Alcázar first. The Casa de Pilatos is smaller, but we think it is a good second palace on a two- or three-day trip. It also has a similar Mudéjar-and-Renaissance feel without the queues. It fits into the afternoon of our 2-day itinerary or the palace morning of the 3-day itinerary.

Tips for your visit

• When to go: mornings are the quietest. The palace rarely gets crowded, but tour groups do stop here in spring.
• Summer: most of the visit is under cover or in shade, so it is a good choice for the hottest part of the day, and it works on a rainy day too.
• Photos: allowed on the ground floor. Wide-angle shots of the patio work best from the corners.
• Accessibility: the ground floor and gardens are mostly on one level. The upper floor is reached by the staircase.

Nearby: combine it with

• Santa Cruz: the old Jewish quarter starts a few minutes south. Walk through it towards the Alcázar and the cathedral. See Santa Cruz.
• Plaza de Pilatos and San Esteban: the square in front has a statue of the painter Zurbarán, and the Mudéjar church of San Esteban is around the corner.
• Palacio de las Dueñas: the Seville home of the Dukes of Alba, about 15 minutes north on foot. Doing both makes a good palace morning.
• Setas de Sevilla: about 10 minutes away. See Setas de Sevilla.
• More sights: see our list of things to do in Seville.

Where to stay nearby

The streets around the palace are quiet, central and close to Santa Cruz. See where to stay in Seville and our boutique hotels list. Three options we recommend within a few minutes’ walk:

• Hospes Las Casas del Rey de Baeza (€€–€€€): a restored 18th-century corral house with a rooftop pool, just behind the palace.
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• Hotel Palacio de Villapanés (€€€): an 18th-century palace on Calle Santiago, about 5 minutes away.
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• Corral del Rey (€€€): about a dozen rooms in a 17th-century house in the Alfalfa, about 10 minutes away.
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