Palace of Valdesoto: An Asturian Baroque Palace
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.5
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Spain
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Crown of Castile, Spanish
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Elite Residence
On this page8 sections
History
The Palace of Valdesoto is an eighteenth-century palace in Spain, in Valdesoto parish, Siero, Asturias, built within the austere Baroque tradition of Asturian palatial architecture. A Carreño ancestral house stood on the site by the seventeenth century, and the present palace was built in the eighteenth century, probably incorporating an earlier house renovated during that period. Additions and alterations in the nineteenth century, particularly toward its close, did not substantially change the original conception.
The Carreño House
The site was closely connected with the Carreño family. Francisco Carreño Miranda, perpetual councillor of Oviedo, owned both the Carreño house at Valdesoto and the family house at Faes. He died in Zamora in 1677. His son, Captain Francisco Carreño y Estrada, died at Valdesoto in 1700, while his wife, Luisa de Peón y Vigil, died there in 1724. Several later members of the family were born or baptized at Valdesoto, reinforcing the house’s role as a long-standing centre of the family’s life.
Two of the couple’s daughters connect the palace with wider figures and families of eighteenth-century Asturias. María Teresa married Fernando Carlos Miranda y Ribera at Valdesoto in August 1716. Her sister Serafina Carreño became the paternal grandmother of Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, an eighteenth-century Spanish writer, jurist, and political thinker associated with the Spanish Enlightenment. Jovellanos stayed at the palace in 1790 while travelling through the mining districts.
The Canillejas Succession
During the nineteenth century, the palace passed through the Carreño and Vereterra families. Ramona Carreño Solís, one of its owners, died in 1849. Her husband, Manuel Hilario Vereterra Rivero, Marquis of Gastañaga and Deleitosa, died in 1854. Their son Miguel de Vereterra y Carreño inherited the property, followed by his son Manuel Vereterra Lombán, a member of the Spanish parliament and a senator for life who died in 1931.
Manuel Vereterra Lombán was widowed in 1909 when Isabel Armada Fernández de Córdoba died. She was Marchioness of Canillejas, a grandee of Spain, meaning a member of the highest rank of the Spanish nobility, and the daughter of the Marquises of San Esteban del Mar and the Counts of Revillagigedo. Through this succession, the palace became associated with the title of Canillejas and is also known as the Palace of the Marquis of Canillejas.
Under the Marquises of Canillejas, Valdesoto entered a period of splendour. The palace hosted social events, parties, and family celebrations. King Alfonso XIII, who ruled Spain from 1886 to 1931, is said to have visited it, while his aunt, the Spanish infanta Isabel de Borbón, known as “La Chata,” reportedly came regularly. Alfonso de Borbón y Battenberg, Alfonso XIII’s eldest son and then Prince of Asturias, definitely visited the palace in 1924, although he never became king.
Family Memorial and Later Ownership
At the request of the widowed Marquis of Canillejas, a family pantheon was built against the parish church of San Félix de Valdesoto. It has an internal entrance from the church transept, and part of the family is buried there. Amalia Vereterra Armada, daughter of Manuel Vereterra Lombán and Isabel Armada Fernández de Córdoba and Countess of Villarea, inherited the house and died there on 7 September 1976. Ownership then passed to her descendants. The palace complex was declared a Property of Cultural Interest as a monument in 2006.
Remains
The palace occupies a large estate enclosed by a substantial castellated wall. Its grounds include approximately 70,000 square metres of garden, while the main residence is a compact, closed rectangular block of two storeys. The building has smooth elevations with restrained ornament. A tower-like structure interrupts the otherwise regular mass at the corner formed by the north and east façades. The palace contains approximately 400 square metres of floor area, and its sides measure slightly more than 20 metres.
Main Residence
The centre of the palace opens onto a courtyard surrounded by galleries supported by four Tuscan columns. A Tuscan column is a plain classical column with a simple shaft and capital. Attached to the east façade is a Neo-Gothic chapel, reached from inside the residence through a tribune, an elevated gallery or viewing space that provides access between the house and chapel. The chapel’s apse, the rounded or polygonal end of the building, helps define the eastern side of the complex.
A small rope-moulded window survives from the earlier house at the western end of the façade, beside the chapel apse. The interiors contain furniture, paintings, ceramics, and other decorative objects whose quality and close connection with the building and its inhabitants contribute to the character of the residence.
Historic Garden
The garden is regarded as one of the best examples of a classical garden in Asturias. Its layout includes parterres, a garden walkway for circulation through the grounds, a gallery of statues, stairways, balustrades, a gazebo, stone columns, and a square paved with glazed tiles. A French designer created the Versailles-inspired design in the late nineteenth century, giving the grounds a formal arrangement within the larger enclosed estate.
Auxiliary Buildings
More vernacular auxiliary buildings are arranged around the north façade. They include a pavilion, greenhouse, bird cages, cages for wild animals, a viewing structure, a dovecote, hydraulic equipment, and a large panera, a traditional Asturian raised granary used for storing agricultural produce. Together, these structures extend the complex beyond the principal residence and garden into a group of estate buildings with domestic, agricultural, and ornamental functions.
