Born in Zaragoza, Salvador de Villa spent his working life on the mints of the Spanish empire in the Americas, moving between Mexico City and Lima before the crown sent him to Potosí. Local officials, led by governor Ventura Santelices y Venero, had argued that the Villa Imperial should simply enlarge its sixteenth-century mint; the king overruled them and Villa arrived to build a new one from nothing. Work ran from 1759 to 1773 on a block of 7,570 square metres, producing some 15,000 square metres of building around five courtyards and roughly two hundred rooms in dressed stone, river cobble and fine brick. Villa died in Potosí on 21 January 1764, four years into the job and around seventy years old; his pupil Luis Cabello took over, handing the work to Jaime San Just in 1765. The finished mint cost 1,148,452 pesos.
