General Archive of the Indies Archivo General de Indias (AGI)

Overview

The Archivo General de Indias (AGI), known in English as the General Archive of the Indies, is one of the world's most significant historical archives, preserving the documentary legacy of the Spanish Empire's administration of the Americas, the Philippines, and other overseas territories. Located in Seville, Spain, within the former Merchants' Exchange (Casa Lonja de Mercaderes), the AGI is administered by the Spanish Ministry of Culture and Sport. Together with the Seville Cathedral and the Alcázar, the building and its contents were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987.

History and Founding

The archive was founded in 1785 by royal decree of King Charles III, following a proposal by historian Juan Bautista Muñoz and the support of José de Gálvez, Secretary of the Indies. Its purpose was to centralize documentation relating to Spain's overseas empire, which until then had been dispersed among repositories in Simancas, Cádiz, and Seville. The building that houses the archive—the Casa Lonja de Mercaderes—was originally constructed between 1583 and 1598 to the design of Juan de Herrera, architect of El Escorial, as the trading house of Seville's merchant guild. The first documents arrived in October 1785. The building underwent a thorough restoration in 2002–2004.

Collections and Holdings

The AGI holds over 43,000 document bundles (legajos) comprising approximately 80 million pages, installed on roughly 9 linear kilometers of shelving. The holdings cover the 15th through 19th centuries and include records from the Council of the Indies (Consejo de Indias), the House of Trade (Casa de la Contratación), the Spanish merchant guilds of Seville and Cádiz, and various secretariats of state. Highlights include autograph manuscripts by Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan, Hernán Cortés, and Francisco Pizarro; the Capitulations of Santa Fe signed between Columbus and the Catholic Monarchs; and the Treaty of Tordesillas. The archive also holds approximately 8,000 maps and drawings. Four items in the AGI have been inscribed individually on UNESCO's Memory of the World register.

Access and Usage

The AGI is open free of charge for research visits. The research room is open Monday through Thursday 09:00–19:00 and Friday 09:00–15:00. The public visiting hours for exhibitions are Tuesday through Saturday 09:30–17:00, and Sunday and public holidays 10:00–14:00. Researchers can access the AGI's holdings digitally through PARES (Portal de Archivos Españoles), which provides descriptions and digital images of millions of documents. As of 2023, PARES contained over 5.4 million published descriptions linked to more than 36 million digital images.