Description

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This 16th-century manor house, also known as Casa de la Aduana (Customs House), occupies an entire block that borders the altazanos Monsenor Estepa (before St. Ana), Dean Luis Perez de Vargas and Aduana Street.

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Built in the first half of the 16th century in Renaissance style, it would be remodeled at the end of the 18th century, building its beautiful porticoed courtyard. In the 19th century and the first half of the 20th it was the Cavalry barracks of the Civil Guard. It ended up being a neighbor's house. At the end of the seventies, the front of the Perez de Vargas y Gormaz was built on its western facade, altering the original design of the Segundo de Cardenas and distorting the urban meaning of the St. Ana hillock. In 1985, the City Council transferred the building to the Ministry of Finance, which was responsible for restoring it to open its offices there.

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Its cover, built in sandstone, is located on the northwest side of the facade to obtain a visibility that the narrowness of the street denies and can see from it the parish of Santiago.

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The cover is organized in two bodies of unequal height, topped by a triangular pediment decorated with the weapon blade of the Cardenas lineage. In the first body, larger, the doorway with a semicircular arch that rests on the impost. Its thread striated between concentric bands and framed between Corinthian pilasters supported by anthropomorphic figurines and an architrave that are conceived as an alfiz. The albanegas decorated with medallions

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To most of its elements: semicircular arch of similar light, decoration of the thread, the medallions, the framing of the vain, the knockers, the hinges, etc. they induce us to think of the same authorship, which would fall on the master stonemason Domingo de Tolosa

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The second body of the cover, of smaller size, has a vain topped with a triangular pediment, decorated with a medallion, and flanked with shields on cut, stamped leathers and with a helmet. The one of right side with the lineages of the Cárdenas, Valdivia and Palomino and the one of the left with the one of the Garmaz and Parraga. Heraldry that induces us to think that it was built in the days of Juan de Cadenas Parraga, son of Pablo de Cardenas and Catalina de Parraga.

 

Its interior patio, fruit of the remodeling that was made in the building in the eighteenth century, can be considered as one of the most beautiful in the city. In the upper floor double arcade that corresponds to one of the lower, obtaining a showy mobility. Relationship that exists in the face of the City Council, which would be taken as a model. The room parallel to the front line, and connected to the patio has a coffered ceiling decorated with the Cardenas emblem, which would be restored in 1986.

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Association of Friends of the Patrimony of Andujar