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Essential Architecture- Granada Palace of Charles V |
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architect |
Pedro Machuca |
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location |
Granada |
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date |
1527 to 1568 |
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style |
Spanish Renaissance |
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construction |
masonry |
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type |
Palace |
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| The Palace of Charles V: exterior view | |
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| View of the patio | |
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| Panoramic view 180º | |
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The Palace of Charles V, in Granada, Spain, is a Renacentist construction,
located on the top of the hill of the Assabica, inside the Nasrid
fortification of the Alhambra. It was commanded by Charles V, Holy Roman
Emperor, who wished to establish his residence close to the Alhambra
palaces. Although the Catholic Monarchs had already altered some rooms
of the Alhambra after the conquest of the city in 1492, Charles V
intended to construct a permanent residence befitting an emperor. The
project was given to Pedro Machuca, an architect whose biography and
influences are poorly understood. At the time, Spanish architecture was
immersed in the Plateresque style, still with traces of Gothic origin.
Machuca built a palace corresponding stylistically to Mannerism, a mode
still in its infancy in Italy. Even if accounts that place Machuca in
the atelier of Michelangelo are accepted, at the time of the
construction of the palace in 1527 the latter had yet to design the
majority of his architectural works. The plan of the palace is a 63-meters-long square containing an inner circular patio. This structure, the main Mannerist characteristic of the palace, has no precedent in Renaissance architecture, and places the building in the avant-garde of its time. The palace has two floors. On the exterior, the lower is of a padded tuscan order, while the upper is of the ionic order, alternating pilasters and pedimented windows. Both main façades boast portals made of stone from the Sierra Elvira. The circular patio has also two levels. The lower consists of a doric colonnade of conglomerate stone, with an orthodox classical entablature formed of triglyphs and metopes. The upper floor is formed by a stylized ionic colonnade whose entablature has no decoration. This organisation of the patio shows a deep knowledge of the architecture of the Roman Empire, and would be framed in pure Renaissance style but for its curved shape, which surprises the visitor entering from the main façades. The interior spaces and the staircases are also governed by the combination of square and circle. Similar aesthetic devices would be developed in the following decades under the classification of Mannerism. |
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The Palace of Charles V was started in 1526 but never finished; it perhaps
seems more out of place than any other building in theAlhambra.
The upper floors of the Palace are the domicile of the Museo de Bellas Artes, the first floor is occupied by the Museo de la Alhambra. The Palace was designed by a pupil of Michelangelo, Pedro Machuca. At one point in the history of the Alhambra, the court yard of the Palace of Charles V was used for the staging of bullfights. |
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links |
With thanks to http://www.travelinginspain.com |
| www.essential-architecture.com | |