The Liria Palace, located at Calle de la Princesa 20, Madrid, is a neoclassical palace that served as the Madrid residence of the Dukes of Alba. It was built around 1770 to a design by Ventura Rodríguez, originally commissioned by James Fitz-James Stuart, 3rd Duke of Berwick. The palace was a residence to both the House of Alba and the British architect Edwin Lutyens, who was commissioned by the 17th Duke to provide designs for the interior. The palace houses a unique collection of masterpieces gathered over five hundred years by the dukes of Berwick and Alba.
The collection includes paintings by artists such as Pietro Perugino, Titian, El Greco, Anthonis Mor, Goya, Murillo, Zurbarán, Rembrandt, Jacob van Ruisdael, Ribera, Rubens, Francesco Guardi, Ingres, Joshua Reynolds, Courbet, Henri Fantin-Latour, Eugène Boudin, and Joaquin Sorolla. The palace also contains sculptures of marble and bronze figures from the Roman Empire to the neoclassical period, including a portrait of Gioacchino Rossini by Lorenzo Bartolini.
The gardens were designed by Ventura Rodríguez, Sabatini, and Jean Claude Nicolas Forestier and were remodeled in the romantic English style. From 2024, the gardens can be visited during the summer months. The palace also has an extensive library with more than 9,000 books and manuscripts, including one first-edition copy of Don Quixote and letters by Christopher Columbus, Titian, Rousseau, and other notable figures. The palace houses a pet cemetery at the back of the palace and a sculptural group with statues of fantastic animals is located at a pond at the back.
In 1833, a fire broke out at Liria Palace, destroying part of its archive. The palace was destroyed during the Spanish Civil War and was subsequently rebuilt by Jacobo and Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart, head of the House of Alba from 1955 to 2014.
Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons
Written by Nicolo Ciampini
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