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Seeing Art in Grandee Style: Spanish Duke's Palace Opens to Public

Reuters

   MADRID - One of Madrid's hidden cultural gems, up to now only
   accessible to private guests or art aficionados willing to endure a
   near three-year waiting list, the neoclassical Palace of Liria will
   open its doors to the general public from Sept. 19.

   Home to the 19th Duke of Alba, a Grandee - or highest nobility - of
   Spain and head of one of its oldest and richest aristocratic houses, it
   boasts paintings by Francisco Goya, Diego Velazquez and Peter Paul
   Rubens and a unique library with letters penned by Christopher Columbus
   and a first edition of Don Quixote.

   "You can feel the weight of history the moment you enter this house,"
   Alvaro Romero Sanchez-Arjona, head of the culture department at the
   Casa de Alba Foundation, told Reuters.

   "Visitors ... will realize they're not in a conventional museum, they
   are in a palace, in an inhabited house," Romero added while taking
   receipt of Goya's portrait of the 13th Duchess of Alba - the painter's
   muse - returned after a temporary lease to the Thyssen museum.

   The 18th century building is the third palace the Albas have opened to
   paying visitors since 2016 in an effort to maintain the heritage of the
   family, which is restricted from selling many of its heirlooms due to
   their historic importance for Spain.

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