(…) In a serene square, which has an elegant but mutilated and dismantled palace, a graceful altar with rag flowers next to the aristocratic seriousness of a triumphal arch with a warrior air, and a fountain with lions blurred in the stone (…) The Plaza del Populo was one of the most important squares in Baeza, which housed the main public buildings. In this square were located institutions such as the Old Butcher Shops - current headquarters of the courts -, the Civil Court and Public Notary Office or Casa del Pópulo - current Tourist Office -, the Arco de Villalar, the Puerta de Jaén or the Fuente de los Leones, named after the ornamental elements in the shape of a lion through which the water gushed and which apparently come from the Ibero-Roman ruins of Cástulo, which today is in questionable, because for experts in Iberian sculpture its carving in siliceous stone and its formal appearance suggest a much more modern chronology.

Before finding the right building for the government and provincial administration, the Diputación was located in different buildings in the old town of the capital. Finally, in 1891 the provincial government will move to the Plaza de San Francisco from where still today the Provincial Palace continues to preside over the passage of Bernabé Soriano Street, from the vicinity of the Cathedral. The Provincial Palace is the main work of the civil architecture of the city of Jaén. It was not the first time the Diputación had occupied this site. In fact, the first building that houses the Institution was the Convent of San Francisco, built in 1246 by Fernando III the Holy as a palace with chapel and donated in 1354 by King Pedro el Cruel to the Franciscan friars. With the deamortization, like the rest of the city's convents, it will pass to public hands by hosting our Diputación. It was the poor state of the building that led the Provincial Council to travel through other enclaves of the capital, although the desire to return to that Plaza remained latent. In the middle of 1867, threatening ruin, the convent was demolished to raise in the same place, after almost thirty years of construction, the current Provincial Palace. Jorge Porrua and Moreno were the architect of the project that guides the construction: a traditional building with two floors and basement that revolve around an interior courtyard. In front of the façade, thought of as neoclassical but removed with the neobaroque taste of the architect Justino Flores de Llamas; on the opposite face, the north, a semicircular form that resembles a hemicycle, symbolic space of local democracy. When entering the building the first stop is for the courtyard. It condemns the light and the transfer through the vain galleries, filling the dependencies with life. Coronado with balustrated columns and carpeted by the gardens, round around a fountain from which the image of the virgin emerges. A sculptural set from the Convent of Dominics of the Guard and donated by its owners, to occupy in principle the courtyard of the Provincial Museum. On the first floor, the office of the Presidency is located among others. Already on the second floor is the Hall of Illustrated Characters on whose walls and as witnesses of time are the portraits of jiennenses highlighted throughout history. The balcony of this room serves as a privileged lookout from which to contemplate the Cathedral. Also on this floor is the Salon de Plenos, the heart of local democracy in the province. The Full Hall or Sessions Hall owes its harmonious decoration to the project of the architect Justino Flórez Llamas. Its style recovers the historical mannerist tendencies. The entrance view to the stay draws three parts, the largest central. Most of the decoration is concentrated on the top of the walls in which striated columns give rise to interdices in which large medallions are placed with glass windows supported by children. Most of the windows have civil symbolology related to the province, mainly shields of various municipalities. Close the decoration the roof divided into fifteen milled quadrants in which the three spider lamps that set the living room in a place. The wealth and grandiosity of the stay seems to try to rise to the function assigned to it. The Chamber provides for the full meetings of the Members, at the head of them the President and the other Members in the form of an Chamber. The banks for the attendees are available in front. The plenary sessions of the Council are open to all citizens.