Span of permutation matrices

As user1551 points out, your space is the span of all "magic matrices" -- all $n\times n$ matrices for which every row and column sum is equal to the same constant (depending on the matrix). As an algebra this is isomorphic to $\mathbb{C} \oplus M_{n-1}(\mathbb{C})$.

You can think of this as the image in $\operatorname{End}_{\mathbb{C}}(\mathbb{C}^n)$ of the natural representation of $S_n$ on $n$ points -- perhaps this is where your question comes from. The representation decomposes as the direct sum of the trivial rep and an $(n-1)$-dimensional irreducible.

The set of permutation matrices coming from the permutations $1$, $(1,r)$, $(1,r,s)$ for $1\neq r \neq s \neq 1$ form a basis of this space. To see that they are linearly independent, consider the first rows then the first columns of the corresponding matrices.

The Birkhoff–von Neumann theorem states that the convex hull of permutation matrices is the set of all doubly stochastic matrices. Hence the span of all permutation matrices is given by $S=\{X\in M_{n,n}(\mathbb{C}): \textrm{ all column sums and row sums of } X \textrm{ are equal}\}$.