Casa de Los Pinelo

This guide to Casa de Los Pinelo in Seville opens with Francisco Pinelo, a Genoese merchant turned crown accountant, backing a foreign navigator's voyage that most Sevillian financiers refused to fund. It follows how his son, a cathedral canon, built this Renaissance house around 1540 to secure the family name, importing marble courtyard columns carved in Genoa and shipped across the sea that made the Pinelos rich. Stand in the courtyard and look up at the columns and the plasterwork medallions above them.