Col·legi de l'Art Major de la Seda, Valencia

The Col·legi de l'Art Major de la Seda is the former headquarters of Valencia’s silk workers, now presented as the city’s Silk Museum. Its façade gives you a clear clue to the building’s character: a stone entrance with a straight lintel, crowned by a cardinal’s hat. The building began as a fifteenth-century house, acquired by the guild in 1494, and gained its present baroque appearance after a major eighteenth-century renovation.

The institution itself grew from the Velluters guild, whose regulations received royal approval in 1479. Its work was practical and powerful: it supervised silk manufacture and regulated the trade in Valencia. In 1686, Carlos II granted the organization collegiate status and raised silk working to the rank of a major art.

You can also see why the restoration matters. The recovered fabric of the building includes plasterwork, ceramic floors, wall paintings, a Gothic spiral staircase, and the former garden, now arranged as a patio. The restored museum opened on the seventeenth of June 2016, bringing the history of Valencian silk back into this former guild house. This façade belongs to an institution that shaped both the craft and the people who made it.