The Patriarca and its dragon

You are standing before the Royal Seminary College of Corpus Christi, which Valencians simply call “el Patriarca”. It was founded at the end of the sixteenth century by Saint John of Ribera, Archbishop of Valencia and Patriarch of Antioch, one of the most powerful men of his time. Behind its sober façade hides one of the city's most famous animals: a dragon.

1A caiman called Lepanto

In the vestibule of the church hangs a stuffed caiman. According to research by the historian Àngel Campos-Perales, the animal came from Peru and it was Ribera who named it “Lepanto”; it is the only surviving remnant of his collection of animals. The most widespread version adds that it was a gift from the Viceroy of Peru and that, when it died, it was hung at the entrance as a reminder of the silence to be kept in church.

2The drac of the Patriarca

To ordinary people, the reptile was “el drac del Patriarca”, the Patriarca's dragon. Mothers pointed to it to frighten children who were making a racket during Mass, and the popular imagination gradually invented a past for it as a monster lurking in the waters of the Turia. In 1901 Vicente Blasco Ibáñez devoted a short story to it, “El dragón del Patriarca”, which fixed the image of the caiman in the city's memory.

The dragon is real: it is stuffed and hangs from the ceiling. What belongs to legend is its life as a river monster.

The college also holds an important collection of paintings, with works by Juan de Juanes and El Greco, in a building that has barely changed since the seventeenth century.

3What to look for

• The dome and bell tower of the college, peeping over the square.
• The church doorway, on Calle de la Nave.
• La Nau, the old university, on the other side of the square.