The Big House

Description

The so-called Casa Grande is located flanking the southern side of the Plaza de Bajo - a popular name -, wide public space, which works and performs functions that a larger square of any Spanish village.

It is actually a wide rectangle, divided into three floors in height and with an airful turret-view on the east side - or left side. Very common typology in Granada, especially in the neighborhoods of San Jerónimo, San Matías and la Magdalena. Although, unlike here, it does not present a porticated and blasphemed courtyard in its centralizer, which leads us to think that it would not in its origin be a foundation of a family - more or less aristocratic - for its particular residence, so we suspect it would have another purpose.

The same similarity with the granadine is also given from a constructive point of view. Thus, if brick is used for the wall walls, for the structural elements, jambas, dintels and frontons, the quarry is used - in this case the asperon so abundant in the place - and the latter are the elements that define it from the stylistic point of view.

As a result, we are facing an interesting example of a typical house of the full baroque - the second half of the XVII-, where there is still a very strong presence of the elements of Mudejar tradition, the façade being very well resolved, because of its interior only highlights the dome on the pechines that originally topped the staircase.

On the first floor, whose cover of the apainelated arch does not appear by focusing the set, its beautiful intellized windows, crowned by beautiful curved and broken fronts, stand out. In the second, the most noble, the rhythms are changed, as they are small intellized windows with the same type of front, except that located on the door which is a large balcony framed by a beautiful alfice, also being in both bodies of a high quality the grate. Finally, a large, flying cornice separates them from the last with a proliferation of semicircular windows.

A number of hypotheses have been set aside on the promoters of its construction. At some times we thought it might be the great plateau that the first Marquis de la Rambla ordered to raise in the town, from which we even have several works payments. However, by some documents it seems to be deduced that it was built by the albaceas and employers of the foundation created by Mother Martha of Jesus - the so-called Almagro House - from the place - to also use it as a table to house travellers and carriages, which with their income would help to cover the expenses of the Hospital of Mercy.