Monasterio de San Francisco * * *

Restaurant

In our restaurant you can enjoy our fine Andalusian and Mediterranean dishes with a slight touch of Cordobese gastronomy. During the hunting season in autumn and winter our guests can savour the most famous game recipes, carefully prepared by our experienced cuisine staff.
During the summer season dinner will be served outside in one of our magnificent inner courtyards, illuminated with candlelight.

Bar

The hotel has a large bar area for our guests, open all day long. Here you can have a variety of drinks, teas and coffees, sandwiches and pastries. This cosy area is perfect for informal meetings, reading or simply relaxing.

Swimming Pool and Gardens

During the summer season our guests can use the magnificent swimming pool, a reminiscence of Arabic times, located in the garden area of the hotel. This garden has a great variety of trees and plants. Many of them are ornamental, following the tradition of the monks, when the hotel still was a monastery.
A variety of organic products are cultivated here and later used in our kitchen to offer our guests meals of high quality.

Inner Courtyards

The Hotel Hospedería de San Francisco is an ancient monastery of great architecture with its originally preserved cloister.
There are more ornamented inner courtyards in this hotel, following the tradition of Andalusian houses, all adorned with geranium, fern, jasmine and bougainvillea.

Meeting Room

The hotel has tree meeting room with capacity for 40 persons. 

During your visit to our town you can enjoy a variety of activities which help you to get in touch with our culture.

Amongst these activities we would like to recommend the following:
Within the city walls you can visit the area where you will find the most important monuments of Palma del Rio: the Parroquia (church) de la Asunción, the Convento (monastery) de Santa Clara, the Palacio (palace) de los Portocarrero, the Caballerizas Reales (royal horse stables) and the Capilla (chappel) de las Angustias. This whole historical area has been declared an area of great cultural interest (Bien de Interés Cultural).

Visits to the nearby monasteries of: the Convento de Santa Maria de las Escalonias and the Convento de San Calixto.
The local town museum, livestock of bulls and horses, an excursion to the Sierra de Hornachuelos Natural Park, the shooting-range, fishing in the Guadalquivir and Genil Rivers, an excursion to Cordoba (53 km) and Seville (80 km), the fair “Feria del Teatro en el Sur”, which takes place during the first week in July.

Leisure Nearby:

- Castillo de Almodovar del Río: 25 Kms. far from Palma del Río, just

  in the way to Córdoba.
- Hornachuelos Natural Park: 8 Kms. far from our Hotel. (Nature,

  Birwatching, pedestrian routes,…)
- International centre for water sports in Lake Embalse de la Breña:

  25 Kms. Far from the hotel, just in the way to Cordoba.
- Medina Azahara ruins at 35 Kms. far from the hotel in the way to

  Córdoba.

In his last will the 7th Lord of Palma del Rio decreed the construction of this monastery, whose first phase ends in 1492. It seems that this date, the year of the discovery of America, marks the life of this monastery. As missionaries the monks of this monastery founded many cities in North America, such as San Francisco or Los Angeles. Some of them died as martyrs, e.g. Brother Diego de Úbeda, who died nearby the present city of Santa Barbara. They also played an important role in the commerce and agriculture of that time, teaching amongst many things, the cultivation of oranges, especially the outstanding variety of Palma del Rio.
In the 19th century the property changed ownership by the church to the family Moreno de la Cova who restored and used it as their family residence. At the end of the 20th century it was converted into a hotel, maintaining rigorous respect for the austerity of the cells and the general character of the building.

ABOUT PALMA DEL RIO

Palma del Rio looks out toward Seville, a fact that you can note in the accent of its inhabitants as well as in the characteristic of its architecture. It is the capital of agriculture in the Guadalquivir River basin and the cradle of bullfighting. The smell of its orange blossoms is pure delight. It is privileged geographically to be located where the two most important Andalusian rivers, the Guadalquivir and the River Genil, come together..