Plaza Nueva

With a perimeter of about 500 meters, it occupies an area of approximately 14,000 m². Here is one of the ends of the streetcar line «Metro-centro». Belonging to the Casco Antiguo district it serves as a divider between two neighborhoods, the square is located within the Arenal neighborhood, being the blocks on its north and east sides (town hall) within the Alfalfa neighborhood.

The square is located between two neighborhoods.

Converge in it the streets Tetuán, Jaén and Méndez Núñez to the north; Bilbao and Madrid to the west; Badajoz, Barcelona and Joaquín Guichot to the south; Granada and the Avenida de la Constitución to the east. Known as «laguna de la Pajería», it was a wetland in the Middle Ages, whose waters, from an arm of the river Guadalquivir, came from Sierpes street and had an outlet on Constitución avenue. With the Almoravid extension of the wall it was accessed through the door of the Potters. After its drying would become a cemetery, and in the thirteenth century would settle on this land the Franciscan friars, who by successive extensions would end up building a convent house of enormous dimensions, much larger than the current perimeter of the square.

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After the war.

After the Napoleonic war of 1808 the convent building was badly damaged, also suffering in 1810 a fire that ended up ruining it, to the point that part of the area was conditioned as a square; however, a slow reconstruction begun in 1813, which would not materialize because of the confiscation of property to the Church of 1835 that paralyzed the work definitively would undertake a slow reconstruction begun in 1813, which would not come to materialize because of the disentailment of the goods to the Church of 1835 that paralyzed the work. The Plaza Nueva, and all the small streets that surround it, arose in 1848 when the Convent «Casa Grande» of San Francisco, of the Franciscan Order and its annexes of the Hospital de Terceros Franciscanos and the Colegio de San Buenaventura, which was the novitiate and house of studies of the order, were demolished.

It was completed in 1818.

It was completed in 1853, although it was not inaugurated until 1857. The primitive appearance of the square was of a two-storey farmhouse, uniform on the three sides in front of City Hall, of which only the section between the Telefonica building and Barcelona Street remains standing as a witness. In the center of the square there was a large bandstand for music, which disappeared to raise the current monument to San Fernando, which was inaugurated in 1924. The first name it was given was Plaza de San Francisco, after the convent that disappeared, until 1857. At first it was labeled as «Plaza de la Infanta Isabel», for the daughter of the Dukes of Montpensier.

The first name given was «Plaza de la Infanta Isabel», for the daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Montpensier.

Since 1873, it was called «Plaza de la Infanta Isabel».

From 1873, with the I Republic, the square was renamed «Republic» and «Federal Republic». With the Restoration in 1875, the City Council named it «de San Fernando». In 1931 the II Republic baptized it as «Plaza Nueva». In 1936 it became «San Fernando» again, but the plaques were never changed. Finally democracy officially gave it the name by which it had always been known: «Plaza Nueva». Presiding over the square is the monument to the saintly King Ferdinand III of Castile. The Town Hall building stands out, with its eighteenth-century façade on the eastern side of the square. Also noteworthy is the small Chapel of San Onofre embedded within the nineteenth-century buildings, the only remains of the disappeared Convent of San Francisco, and the magnificent building of the Telefonica, the work of Juan Talavera y Heredia.

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In 1861 the initiative was resumed with the express support of Queen Isabella II. Several changes of opinion and administrative circumstances delayed the decision until 1877, the year in which King Alfonso XII laid the first stone. The work was finished the following year, being its inauguration on August 25, 1924. The most famous artists of the time collaborated in the final elaboration of the monument. Thus, the pedestal and the idea of the whole is by Juan Talavera Heredia. The sides of the pedestal are flanked by the figures of four characters that accompanied the Holy King in the conquest of Seville: the figure of Alfonso X is the work of Enrique Pérez Comendador; the knight Garci Pérez de Vargas is the work of Joaquín Sánchez Cid; Admiral Ramón Bonifaz is by José Lafitta y Diaz, and Alfonso López Rodríguez did that of Bishop Don Remondo. At the top, the equestrian statue of San Fernando is by Joaquín Bilbao Martínez. Casa Longoria, work of neo-baroque style, its design is due to the architect of Levantine origin and settled in Seville Vicente Traver Tomás, who designed it in 1917 for its promoter, Don Miguel García de Longoria; finally being finished in 1920. It is a splendid work whose facade to the square is arranged with perfect symmetry, made all of it in light-colored brick, which includes fine details in blue tile. With three floors high, its composition focuses attention on the large wrought iron balcony located on the axis of the facade, in the center of the second floor.

But undoubtedly its most outstanding and most striking element is its beautiful lookout tower located on the corner. This is a body of great uniqueness for which its author recovers Baroque elements such as scrolls or pinnacles, and wisely combines them with other more classicist elements such as curved pediments and oculi. The Banco de Bilbao building in Seville stands on one of its corners. It dates from 1950 and responds to the classicist rationalist trend of this period, which is especially carried out in the architecture associated with corporate buildings of large entities, both public and private. Philips Building, known by the name of this trademark, is located on the corner of Méndez Núñez street with Bilbao street, and overlooks the square; it is the work of Alfonso Toro Buiza from 1960.

With four floors of high ceilings.

With four floors high with a very studied composition of facades by levels, is the work of the architect Galnares Sagastizábal, who designed a monumental and severe facade chaired by six majestic Ionic columns with smooth shafts and giant order. In the 1975 Metro project, a station was planned for Plaza Nueva. The works began with the excavation of a deep access shaft to the future station, similar to those built at Puerta de Jerez and Alameda de Hércules. During the excavation, remains of a ship, probably Viking, were discovered.