La Lonja de la Seda

This late-Gothic silk exchange is a monument to the mercantile wealth of medieval Valencia, its great hall a forest of spiralling stone columns rising into palm-like vaults. Merchants once struck deals beneath inscriptions warning against dishonest trade. A tower held a prison for defaulting traders. A distinctive detail is the twisting columns of the trading hall, carved to resemble the trunks of palm trees whose branches meet in the vaulting overhead, a bold expression of civic ambition in stone.