Historic former city hall and mayor’s residence on John Mackintosh Square.
Gibraltar City Hall is the territory’s former city hall on John Mackintosh Square. Built in 1819 as merchant Aaron Cardozo’s grand private mansion, it later housed the Club House Hotel and Gibraltar City Council. Today it serves as the official residence and office of the Mayor of Gibraltar.
Gibraltar City Hall, the former city hall of Gibraltar, stands at the western end of John Mackintosh Square in the city centre. The building began as a private mansion, constructed in 1819 for Aaron Cardozo, a wealthy Jewish merchant of Portuguese origin who had settled in Gibraltar with his family. At the time, it was described as the largest private mansion ever seen in Gibraltar, a three‑storey house dominating the square. The mansion occupies the site of an earlier complex that had served successively as a hospital, the Roman Catholic chapel La Santa Misericordia, and later a prison. Because Cardozo was not a Protestant, he was not normally allowed to own property in Gibraltar, but he was eventually granted this site on the condition that his new house would ornament the square. After Cardozo’s death in 1834, the building was leased to John Ansaldo and operated as the Club House Hotel. In 1874 it was purchased by Pablo Antonio Larios, a wealthy Gibraltar‑born businessman and banker of Spanish descent, who fully restored it. His son Pablo Larios sold it in 1922 to the colonial authorities. Intended as a post office, it instead became the seat of the newly formed Gibraltar City Council and later the official residence and office of the Mayor of Gibraltar.
