27 February 2013

Global Seminars & Invited Speaker Series

STATELY AND PALATIAL ARCHITECTURE OF PAMPLONA

The palace of the Constable of Navarre

Ms. Mª Josefa Tarifa Castilla.
University of Zaragoza

The Palace of the Constable of Navarre in Pamplona is one of the most important buildings undertaken in the capital of the kingdom throughout the 16th century and the most important from the point of view of stately architecture. A . It was commissioned by one of the most outstanding lineages of the Navarrese nobility, the Counts of Lerín, who since the creation of this degree scroll in 1424 by concession of the monarch Charles III to his daughter Juana on the occasion of her marriage to Luis de Beaumont, also held the distinguished title of Constable of Navarre shortly afterwards, position , a name by which it is still referred to today. A stately home that Luis de Beaumont, 3rd Count of Lerín ordered to be built in the early 1520s in the burgh of San Cernin, at the beginning of Calle Mayor on a site near the parish church of San Saturnino. The Guipuzcoan stonemason Pedro de Echaburu, who had been in charge of the foundations of the church of the convent of the Dominicans in Pamplona since 1515, worked on it. Prior to May 1524, Echaburu moved from Lerín, where he was undertaking a major remodelling of the Beaumont castle in that town, to Pamplona in order to provide the layout of the door and windows of the Constable's house, as recently documented by Echeverría Goñi.
 

Palace of the Condestable of Navarre. Pamplona
 

However, the most important interventions in the Pamplona palace took place from 1548 when his son, Luis de Beaumont, IV Count of Lerín, acquired four adjoining houses to enlarge his own for 3,600 ducats.600 ducats, being configured as a building seated on a trapezoid-shaped lot bordering Mayor and Jarauta streets, to which in the 16th century the "accessory house" of Francés de Beaumont, cousin of the 3rd Count of Lerín, captain of the guard of Carlos V, was added to the rear. On the death of the Count, the house was inherited by his daughter, Brianda de Beaumont, V Countess of Lerín, who married Diego Álvarez de Toledo, son of the Duke of Alba, the titles of both families being united from the following generation. From 1590 onwards, the bishop of Pamplona and his successors in the position of the Pamplona mitre resided there until the current Archbishop's Palace was built in the middle of the 18th century, and was later occupied by the municipal corporation between 1752 and 1760 while work on the new town hall was being completed. The palace remained the property of the Duke of Alba until the end of the 19th century, when it was acquired by the bourgeois Juan seminar, and underwent a thorough renovation by the master builder Pedro Arrieta (1891), which caused it to lose its Renaissance manor house appearance. On the ground floor, leave , large openings were opened for store windows, while the second and third floors were used for housing, and the corner balcony was replaced by a chamfered corner with bay windows, this being the first of the renovations carried out in the old part of the city.

The purchase of the building by the Pamplona City Council due to the state of ruin it was in at the end of the 20th century and the subsequent restoration undertaken by the architects Leache and Tabuenca (2001-2008) has made it possible to recover the palace and restore it as far as possible to the appearance it may have had in its original configuration. A stately home built according to the typical Renaissance palace typology, elongated, tending to horizontality, with three levels of height on the main facade, the floor leave access through a simple linteled opening, the noble floor with balconies arranged symmetrically and the top with a gallery of arches. After crossing the hallway we enter the interior of the house, whose rooms are distributed around a main courtyard, a common solution that we also find in other Navarrese stately residences of the time, such as the palace of Pedro Magallón in Tudela or the Eguía family in Estella. A linteled courtyard of two sections supported on the floor leave by stone columns of octagonal shaft, highlighting for its architectural carving those of the start of the staircase of Ionic order, of Serlian inspiration, one of which was placed on the outside corner balcony of the noble floor. Behind it is the service courtyard and the Beaumont accessory house, in whose floor leave is the oldest part of the whole complex, the gothic conference room , belonging to an earlier construction.
 

Palace of the Constable of Navarre. Inner courtyard
 

The restoration of the building has allowed the recovery of the 16th-century wooden alfarjes, made up of large pine beams supported on scroll modillions. Among them, the coffered ceilings that cover the large halls on the main floor stand out, especially the main hall, facing the main street, which, although very deteriorated, has polychromes with nine figurative scenes, some of them of mythological themes dedicated to Hercules, such as the fight against Cacus after stealing his cattle or the confrontation with the lion of Nemea. Polychrome remains have also been preserved on the walls of the same floor, dating from the late 19th century with decoration of subject botany.

 

Palace of the Constable of Navarre. Coffered ceilings on the main floor
and detail of Hercules fighting against Cacus