This historic but offbeat art gallery was once a monastery, then a ceramics factory, but today is home to the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo .
Founded in 1399, the Conjunto Monumental de la Cartuja became the favourite sevillano lodging place for Christopher Columbus, who prayed in its chapel before his trip to the Americas and whose remains lay here for more than two decades in 1530–40.
In 1839 the complex was bought by an enterprising Englishman, Charles Pickman, who turned it into a porcelain factory, building the tall bottle-shaped kilns that stand rather incongruously beside the monastery. The factory ceased production in the 1980s and in 1992 the building served as the Royal Pavilion during the Expo. It has since become Seville’s shrine to modern art with temporary expos revolving around some truly bizarre permanent pieces. You can’t miss Alicia, by Cristina Lucas, a massive head and arm poking through two old monastery windows that was supposedly inspired by Alice in Wonderland ; though you could be forgiven for walking obliviously past Pedro Mora’s Bus Stop which looks exactly like…a bus stop.
