Casa de los Velarde

The Casa de los Velarde, also called the Palacio de Velarde, is a sixteenth-century Renaissance mansion in Santillana del Mar, in Cantabria. It stands in the old part of the town and is closed to visitors, so what you can see is the outside.

Santillana del Mar is a village that was shaped by its nobility. In the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, families who had made their fortunes in the service of the crown, in the church, in trade or in the Americas, built stone mansions along its main streets, each bearing a carved coat of arms over the door. The Velarde family was one of these. Their house shows how the fashion for Renaissance forms reached the north of Spain: a solid stone front with a symmetrical arrangement of windows, a carved doorway and a shield, in a plainer and more sober manner than the exuberant palaces of the south. The heraldic panel, with two lions standing on either side of a shield, has faded with time and weather, but the design can still be made out on close inspection.

The building is part of the protected historic ensemble of the village, and it belongs to the group of noble houses around the Plaza Mayor and the neighbouring streets. Other buildings in the same area give a sense of how the village looked when the nobility lived here. The Torre de Don Borja and the Torre del Merino, two towers in the Plaza Mayor, are among the best-known examples, and the Collegiate Church of Santa Juliana, with its Romanesque cloister, is the main monument.

Visitors can enjoy the exterior and the surroundings. The streets of Santillana are closed to traffic, paved with cobbles and lined with stone houses with wooden balconies, flowers and coats of arms, and walking through them is the main pleasure. The village also has many shops selling local sweets, such as sobaos and quesada, and restaurants serving the traditional food of Cantabria.

The Museo de Altamira, with its replica of the famous cave paintings, is a few minutes away by car. Santillana del Mar is best visited early or late in the day, when the day-trip crowds have gone, and the interior of the Casa de los Velarde should be treated as inaccessible unless you hear otherwise locally.