The Ateneo de Sevilla ("Seville Atheneum") founded in Seville, Spain in 1887 by Manuel Sales y Ferré as the Ateneo y Sociedad de Excursiones ("Atheneum and Society of Excursions") continues today in that city as a cultural, scientific, literary, and artistic association.
Among its activities, it organizes Seville's annual Cavalcade of Magi (initiated by the Ateneo in 1918) and grants the literary prizes known as the Premio Ateneo de Sevilla. A gathering there on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the death of the poet Luis de Góngora y Argote is seen as the flowering of Spain's Generation of 1927. Members of the Ateneo have included illustrious Sevillian politicians and writers such as García Bravo-Ferrer and José María Izquierdo. Also, since the early 20th century the Ateneo has had a section dedicated to chess, with such important figures as Joaquín Torres Caravaca and Juan de la Mata y Ortigosa in the 1920s and '30s, and Rafael E. Cid Pérez, president of the Andalusian Chess Federation and organizer of the 1987 World Chess Championship in Seville, where competitors included Gary Kasparov and Anatoli Karpov.
The Ateneo de Sevilla also has a distinguished record as a publisher, especially of works about leading figures of the city with the intention of perpetuating their memory. Prominent among the writers of these works are José María Izquierdo and the president of the Ateneo, Enrique Barrero.
Owing to its importance and influence, the Ateneo has sparked imitations elsewhere in Andalusia. The Ateneo in Isla Cristina (Province of Huelva) founded by Blas Infante and others, and which opened 10 September 1926, has a plaque acknowledging that it was established in imitation of the Ateneo de Sevilla.