The Palacio de Liria, the largest private residence in Madrid , opens its doors to the public. The House of Alba thus shows its precious treasures and its enormous legacy as of this Thursday.

The walk through this palace, located on Princess Street, in the heart of Madrid, not only means a tour of the noble house with more titles of the country, but a trip to the past of Spain .

Thus, in his majestic library one of the 37 wills that Fernando el Católico signed throughout his life, the marriage document of Juana la Loca and Felipe El Hermoso or a map of the island of Hispaniola, drawn by Christopher Columbus, is displayed .

The portrait of the Duchess by Goya.SERGIO ENRÍQUEZ-NISTAL

For 65 minutes, visitors will be able to observe 14 rooms of the Palacio de Liria , each with its own style and history. The difference between a museum in use and the palace is that it is still a family residence, so it has been tried to preserve as it was to give a feeling of home. Tickets can be taken online and tours will be made in groups of 20 people and with the help of an autoguide.

The palace is full of family photos, bedside tables full of jewelers, miniature portraits or porcelain figurines, all of them treasured objects throughout the six centuries of patronage and collecting of the House of Alba, dating from 1472.

The only thing that has been done is to lighten the decoration, which was much more ornate during the Cayetana de Alba stage. The style of the new Duke, Carlos Fitz-James Stuart, is much more sober than his mother's.

The XIX Duke of Alba continues to reside in the Palacio de Liria, so the 250 people who will visit him daily, for 14 euros , can only contemplate the first floor. The second floor, the third floor and the rear gardens will continue to be for private use.

Portrait of Cayetana de Alba.SERGIO ENRÍQUEZ-NISTAL

Before Liria, the House of Alba has already opened to the public the Dueñas Palace in Seville and the Monterrey Palace in Salamanca in order to clear the accounts and be able to defray the enormous expenses generated by these mansions.

The Palacio de Liria, which has 3,500 square meters and 200 rooms, was built by architects Louis Guilbert and Ventura Rodríguez between 1767 and 1785, but was later destroyed by Franco's bombs during the Civil War. Duchess Cayetana's father and then this one and her first husband, Luis Martínez de Irujo, promoted the reconstruction of the building, for which they invested a great fortune.

The residence is accessed by a neoclassical hallway , where visitors can watch a video with the history of the House. Right at the entrance, there is a hand chair, a kind of berth with which he moved to the lords of the time.

On the walls of the hall there is a quote from Cicero , an entire declaration of intentions: "For the immortal gods, who allowed me to inherit these things, not only for myself but for my descendants."

The best private art gallery

In the Flemish hall the paintings of Rubens and Brueghel shine, while in the Spanish they emphasize La Infanta Margarita de Velázquez, El Cristo de El Greco and El anacoreta de Ribera. In the Zuloaga room, the portrait of Cayetana looks like a horse when she was little, which includes a Mickey mouse, which she had to use the painter to make the girl stand still when posing.

Undoubtedly, one of the most emblematic halls is that of Goya, which houses the famous painting of the Duchess of Alba , newly arrived from the Thyssen Museum.

But in the mansion not only the canvases shine, but it also houses spectacular tapestries of the factory of the Gobelins of Paris and porcelain of the best schools of the eighteenth century. Even the desks are authentic works of art and there is one that belonged to Napoleon. In short, these are authentic jewels that have finally been discovered.

The library has 20,000 volumes.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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