The cultural heritage that Medio Cudeyo has is as diverse and extensive as it is unknown to a large part of the population. In any of the localities of the municipality, the visitor will discover a mansion, palace or building of remarkable architecture that collects an important part of the history of the place. They are worthy witnesses of local events and events marked by the life of important ancestral homes and characters of unquestionable influence in their time. The variety of architectural styles of civil constructions allow for a unique tour. Towers, palaces and mansions of various artistic tendencies scattered throughout Medio Cudeyo. We propose a few but surely on your visit you will discover many others.
Alvarado Tower
Alvarado Tower
It is the oldest testimony of the civil architecture of Medio Cudeyo. It combines features of medieval architecture in the typology of a defensive tower along with Renaissance decorative elements. The tower constituted the main body of the mayorazgo founded in the town of Heras by Don Juan Sainz de Alvarado y Bocerraiz in 1573. The building belonged to the Velasco lineage first and the Sota lineage later and is declared an Asset of Cultural Interest.
The building is halfway between the late medieval tower and the proto-Renaissance palace. The tower, influenced by Burgos architecture in the thoroughness of the work presented by the window on its front (framed by pilasters on corbels and topped with pinnacles) above the access door with a semicircular arch made of large ashlars, ashlars that are used also in the openings and in the corners. The cornice is molded and has balls and pinnacles as the finishing touch to the main front. Above the Renaissance window a shield with the arms of Alvarado and a card with the legend JUS EST IN ARMIS (the right is in the arms). Above another window on one of the side facades is another heraldic piece with the arms of the same surname.
Marqués de Valdecilla Birthplace
Marqués de Valdecilla Birthplace
In this mountain house, Don Ramón Pelayo de la Torriente, Marquis of Valdecilla, was born in 1850. The building follows a typology typical of popular architecture with two floors, the upper floor having utility rooms, and a third with an attic profile, with a balcony. The inscription on the lintel of the main façade reports its construction in 1783.
The house has three floors, the upper one as an attic profile, which is covered with a gable roof. The walls are built of plastered masonry, featuring ashlar stone in the corners, lintel and jambs of the entrance door and in the fencing of some openings. The house follows the typology of two bodies of sunroom and estragal between party walls. On the first floor, a lintel door with simple lines has an inscription on its lintel that includes the date of construction of the house (1783) along with the words Jesus, Mary and Joseph. On the second floor of the main façade, a wooden balcony stands out. The upper floor also has a balcony as an attic and the side facades. On the rear façade there is a closed viewpoint that offers magnificent views of the large garden of the property and the church of Santa María de Cudeyo. The property is included in the General Inventory of the Cultural Heritage of Cantabria as an Inventoried Asset since 2001.
Conde de Torreánaz Palace
Conde de Torreánaz Palace
This palace, built at the end of the 19th century and renovated at the beginning of the 20th, was ordered to be built by Luis María de la Torre y Hoz, Count of Torreánaz, Senator and Minister of Grace and Justice. Its eclectic architecture combines elements typical of baroque mansions with features of Academicism from the late 19th century, resorting to heraldry as a sign of social preeminence. Likewise, the extensive palace estate presents outstanding tree specimens.
Palace influenced by mountain baroque architecture, which is a reflection of the use of semicircular arches both on the ground floor of the main body of the building and on the tower that is attached to one of its sides. Another element that refers to historicist architectural models is heraldry, present in several shields (on the access door to the palace, on the portal of the estate, on the tower, on a heraldic roll). Academic features are both the columns that flank the central axis of the main façade and the small projecting cornices as a finishing touch over each of the openings on the upper floor, all of them conceived as balconies. The palace has notes of regionalist and English architecture. Also noteworthy is the garden that surrounds the palace, where we find a small pavilion and the building used for the stables. The estate that forms the Palace garden is a beautiful and dense park that includes four Singular Trees of Cantabria.
Marqueses de Valbuena Palace
Marqueses de Valbuena Palace
This palace with attached chapel belonged to Don Antonio Ibáñez de la Riba Herrera, Archbishop of Toledo. The Palace was built in the 17th and 18th centuries within the lines of baroque classicism, expanding the tower on the primitive site next to the chapel and including a monumental shield with the arms of Ibáñez and Agüero flanked by female figures. It is located on the street General Mola and has been declared an Asset of Cultural Interest.
The palace has a rectangular plan organized into two floors that appear separated from the outside by a horizontal fascia. The ground floor has a triple arch giving access to a hallway. The upper floor has four openings and the central shield with the arms of Archbishop Don Antonio Ibáñez de la Riva Herrera, original owner of the palace. Attached to the palace in the northern part we find what could be the primitive site of the Ibáñez lineage, with its corresponding coat of arms, and the chapel of San Juan, in which the classically treated doorway and the belfry that tops the tower stand out. raised. On one of the side facades of the palace there is a sundial. The building, declared a Site of Cultural Interest in 1985, was owned by Don Antonio Ibáñez de la Riva Herrera, Magistral Canon of the Cathedral of Málaga, Bishop of Ceuta, Archbishop of Zaragoza, Viceroy of Aragon, Inquisitor General of Spain, President of Castile and Archbishop of Toledo. In the 19th century the palace became a convent for religious worshipers. Currently it is a restaurant.
Marquesa de Nájera Square
Marquesa de Nájera Square
It is a complex of undoubted picturesque value in the town of Sobremazas. It is a square around which a row of popular houses with balconies are arranged, as well as the one called La Tudanca, built during the first half of the 19th century, and which was owned by the Marchioness of Nájera. The square, partly cobbled, is illuminated by iron street lamps from London and dated 1832, which constituted a clear example of modernity in the field of public works of the time in a rural environment such as Sobremazas.
Partly paved, the whole square is completed with some houses with balconies and a small garden within the aesthetics of the 19th century. In the square, houses numbers 23, 25 and 26 stand out, some of which once belonged to the Marchioness.
Los Cuetos house
Los Cuetos house
Located at the top of Sobremazas, this mansion is surrounded by a corralada with a monumental semicircular arch doorway with classicist decorative elements framing a shield flanked by tenant warriors. The house has two floors in ashlar with a chapel, and an attached four-story tower. Declared an Asset of Cultural Interest, the current complex dates back to the 18th century and belonged to several Attorney General members of Trasmiera. The illustrious mountain researcher Don Fermín Sojo y Lomba lived in the house.
The mansion is made up of a two-story ashlar building with an attic to which a four-story tower is attached in the northeast corner. The ground floor of the house has a double archway that gives access to a hallway, while on the second floor there is a continuous iron balcony, finishing off the building with an attic area and a hipped roof. The complex is completed with a chapel dedicated to Saint Augustine, which on the outside has a shield dated 1719 that was brought from the Rubalcaba neighborhood in Liérganes in the second half of the 19th century. Another coat of arms that the house has comes from the nearby neighborhood of Turria. The magnificent portal that closes the property and serves as the entrance to it deserves consideration. Composed of three bodies, it distinguishes a lower part that houses a semicircular arch between paired pilasters. Above it is a shield with the arms of the Cuetos and as a top, a split pediment with a female figure in its center known as "La Giralda."
Rubalcaba Palace
Rubalcaba Palace
Built in the second half of the 17th century, it stands out for its sober architecture and the ashlar masonry of its chapel. It is structured on two floors with a notable longitudinal development, a chapel with buttresses and a belfry, and a monumental shield of great decorative richness on the main front with the arms of Rubalcaba supported by lions. The palace was the site of the Rubalcaba lineage in Solares and is located on Avenida Virgen del Pilar.
The volumes, clean and with sober lines, stand out for the magnificent ashlar of the chapel and the main axis of the living area, an axis marked by the access door with a large semicircular arch that leads to the hallway and the large coat of arms of weapons on the facade. In the palace, priest José Manuel de Lapuerta created a seminary training center under the name of Casa de Santiago. Likewise, the historian María del Carmen González Echegaray mentions the existence in the 16th century of the first members of the Rubalcaba lineage in Solares. Thus, Don Hernando González de Rubalcaba, born in 1543. He was followed by his son Don Francisco González de Rubalcaba, Attorney of the Junta of Cudeyo, and his grandson Juan de Rubalcaba y Puente, Knight of Santiago and Deputy General of Trasmiera in 1648.
Villa Arras
Villa Arras
In a well-kept estate of great botanical interest is a three-story 19th century house with wooden viewing points, where the symmetrical decorative elements that run along all its facades stand out. Its square floor plan is structured in two heights and under a roof, with lateral access through stairs. It has viewpoints and balconies distributed symmetrically, as well as eaves and wooden frameworks. It is included in the Cultural Heritage Inventory of Cantabria.
The farm has good specimens of large trees. You can see a huge lime tree (3.30 meters in perimeter), an Irish yew, magnolia trees, and a Japanese cryptomeria. To the south of the house we find several laurels and cypresses. Behind it there is a large tulip tree 2.80m in circumference and several ash trees. On the north façade there is a Japanese privet and several elm trees. In the rest of the property there are good specimens of cajigas, holm oaks, laurels and ash trees. As for the house, with three floors and a semi-basement, the wooden balconies and viewpoints on its facades stand out, as well as the existing porches on two of them. The openings, which are distributed symmetrically along the wall, have frames with moldings, and the different floors are also distinguished by means of fascias that run along the facades. The corners are decorated with small painted tiles, except on the first and basement floors where stone is used. The openings of the semi-basement appear framed by ashlar. It is a building from the beginning of the 20th century and has been included, along with the property, in the Inventory of the Cultural Heritage of Cantabria since 2001.
