Palacio de Liria

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 British architect Edwin Lutyens was commissioned by the 17th Duke to provide designs for the interior; although the reconstruction took place after the architect's death, it made use of his drawings.

The palace contains a remarkable private collection of European art. 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 and Rousseau. 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. All but the facades were destroyed during the Spanish Civil War and it was subsequently rebuilt by Jacobo and Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart, the latter being the head of the House of Alba from 1955 to 2014.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons