The Royal Tobacco Factory of Seville, is an eighteenth-century industrial building, one of the largest and best preserved of its kind in Spain, being at once one of the oldest of that type that are conserved in Europe. The building is spread over a rectangular area of 185 x 147 meters. In Spain only the Escorial monastery, which occupies an area of 207 x 162 meters, higher than its size, the site is surrounded on three sides by a moat that isolates it from the outside, it has up two floors of residential areas. The tobacco plant was found by the Spaniards on their arrival in America in 1492. The city of Seville was the seat of the House of Recruitment and holds the monopoly of trade with the continent. Before the fifteenth century arrived the city the first plants of this species, and were established at the beginning of the sixteenth century the first industrial tobacco factories in Seville, that were the first across Europe.  In the eighteenth century it was decided the construction of this large building, outside the city, later in the twentieth century would become the headquarters for the University of Seville.