Museo y Colegio del Arte Mayor de la Seda

This guide to the Museo y Colegio del Arte Mayor de la Seda in Valencia starts in the barrio of Velluters, where guild inspectors once burned silk that failed to meet the mark. It traces the velvet weavers' guild from its 1479 charter, ratified by King Ferdinand the Catholic, through its elevation under Charles the Second into a body with real power over the trade, including the right to seize and destroy flawed cloth on the spot. You will hear about the master's trial that more than two thousand weavers sat between 1686 and 1755, and the Genoese immigrants among the guild's founders who brought their weaving skills to the city. Pause near the entrance and picture the loom noise that once filled this whole district.