Royal Tobacco Factory

The Royal Tobacco Factory (Spanish: Real Fábrica de Tabacos) is an 18th-century stone building in Seville, southern Spain.

[6] Initially, they were dispersed through the city, but were eventually concentrated in one place—facing the Church of Saint Peter—for sanitary reasons and to facilitate state control of the activity.

[1] The production of snuff was heavy work: enormous sheaves of tobacco were hauled around manually, and horses turned the grinding mills.

[17][18] In his autobiography, published in 1915, Hiram Maxim wrote of a visit he made to the factory: In 1950 it was decided to move the tobacco operations[1] to the Los Remedios neighborhood[20] and to use the historic building as the headquarters of the University of Seville.

[1] The transformation of the building was a major undertaking, performed between 1954 and 1956 according to the plans of architects Alberto Balbontín de Orta [Wikidata], Delgado Roig, and Toro Buiza.

[21] Although the interior has been much altered, especially during the adaptation in the 1950s for use by the University of Seville, the Royal Tobacco Factory is a remarkable example of 18th-century industrial architecture.

[1] Plans originally called for building the walls pilasters, arches and other elements out of the yellow-brown limestone from Martelilla (near Jerez de la Frontera), but it proved too fragile and too often defective.

Outstanding among these is the painting by Gonzalo Bilbao, whose most well known depictions of customs and manners are in the Seville Museum of Fine Arts, including other portrayals of women cigar makers.

[1] The replacement factory built in the 1950s remained part of Spain's national tobacco monopoly Tabacalera until that was merged into Altadis in 1999.

[18] In 2004, Altadis announced plans to close the plant in 2007, bringing to an end Seville's long tradition of making tobacco products.