Palacio de Santa Cruz

Take out your headphones! It’s time to enjoy baroque music with a Metallic stroke

A 360 degrees photo

Historical context

The building, designed by Juan Gómez De Mora, was ordered to be constructed in the year 1629-1636  by the king Felipe IV, at the beginning was a jail,  but Felipe V was  the one who called it a Palace, and nowadays works as «El Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores y Cooperación,»

The palace receives its name thanks to the church which is located next to it «La Iglesia de La Santa Cruz,» but due to a fire in the year 1791 there are many blank spaces in its history.

The artistic style is herrerian.

 

Architectural Details

Architectural style: Herrerian style was developed in Spain in the last third of the sixteenth century, coinciding with the reign of Philip II (1556-1598), and continued in the seventeenth century, although transformed by the baroque currents of the time. It corresponds to the third and last stage of Spanish Renaissance architecture, which evolved towards a progressive ornamental purification, from the initial plateresque to the classic purism of the second third of the sixteenth century and the absolute decorative nudity that introduced the Herrerian style.

Its facade reminds you of another historic Madrid building erected in the same seventeenth century, “La Casa de la Villa”

And at the front of the cover you can appreciate a figure of a winged personage that seems realized in white stone.

Take out your devices and witn the App Aurasma, see the magic

The architectural plan

The facade of the Palace is both sober and showy, with two angular towers topped with spiers that enhance its grandeur and a central doorway with balconies on which stands the royal coat of arms.

The floor plan drawed

It is a quadrangular plant with what seem to look like cloisters or courtyards and 4 turrets in the corners. The style of El Escorial that is Herrerian, of the Renaissance, was very reproduced in Madrid, from the XVI, passing through the buildings that we are studying of the XVII century as at the beginning of the XX, for example with constructions like the headquarters of the army of the air In Moncloa. But this is rather the type of materials, roofs and decks, pinnacles and balls or use of slates. However, the type of plant you show me is quite frequent in different types of buildings, civil.

Rocks used now and then

The most abundant material is granite,that usually is located in basements and smooth walls. The white stone of Colmenar is used for baseboards, columns,pilasters, cornices, balustrades, etc. Since it was finished the palace has undergone several extensions, always using the granite and the limestone. Its reconstruction began in 1944 and finished in 1964, using granitic stone of Zarzalejo and the limestone of Colmenar de Oreja.

  • Features of the rock.

Granite,is a plutonic igneous rock with granulated surface, that is partially resistant to erosion or rain and also to the pass of the time, and mainly formed essentially by quartz, alkali feldspar, plagioclase and mica.Granitoids are formed by solidifying magma with a high content of silica, which is known as saturated magma, to a great depth under the earth’s crust, under conditions of high pressure and slow cooling. If a magma of granitic composition reaches the surface is formed a volcanic rock denominated rhyolite.

         

  • Limestone is a sedimentary rock  with smooth surface that can be diluted because of the pass of the time, it can also be a chemical sedimentary rock formed by the precipitation of calcium carbonate from lake or ocean water.The solubility of limestone in water and weak acid solutions leads to karst landscapes, in which water erodes the limestone over thousands to millions of years. Most cave systems are through limestone bedrock.

       

  • Bricks is a small material used for building its composed of baked clay and various additives, but its not a rock

       

  • Slate is a homogeneous metamorphic rock with a fine-grained surface that derives from a sedimentary rock. Foliation may not correspond to the original sedimentary layering, but instead is in planes perpendicular to the direction of metamorphic compression

     

 

The origin of the rocks

The rocks you have observed previously came from diferent parts, now we are going to tell you from where and you will locate them in a map

  • Quarries used for rocks extraction

At the beginning of the works, the granite stone used came from localities such as Becerril de la Sierra, Galapagar, Collado Villalba, Alpedrete, Torrelodones and Cerceda and granitic stone of Zarzalejo and the limestone of Colmenar de Oreja. Transported the granite from the quarry of zarzalejo, since this stone had a great hardness and endured the erosion very well and was abundant in madrid. 

  • At the begining the granite stone used came from localities such as, Becerril de la Sierra, Galapagar, Collado Villalba, Alpedrete, Torrelodones and Cerceda. 
  • They transported the granite from the quarry of zarzalejo, since this stone had a great hardness and endured the erosion very well and was abundant in madrid.
  • Quartz has a hardness 7 on the mohs scale, feldspar 6, and mica is always less than 6 but the hardness of granite varies according to the quarry. Usually it is between 5.5 and 7, although there are harder granites and softer ones as well.

  • Here is an image of the distance between one of the quarries (Zarzalejo) and Madrid. How did materials come from so far away?The stones of the sierra de madrid were carried in cart, and it took several days to carry them out
  • And the hardness of limestone on the Mohs scale is 3, and reacts with effervescence in the presence of acids such as hydrochloric acid.

    Alterations that the materials have suffered :

    Deterioration in the granite of buildings are few, living microorganisms, pollution (carbon dioxide) meteorological phenomena: rain, wind… 

    1 Wind erosion:  It is a common phenomenon occurring mostly in flat, bare areas; dry, sandy soils; or anywhere the soil is loose, dry, and finely granulated. Wind erosion damages land and natural vegetation by removing soil.
    2 Gravitational erosion: Causes erosion by pulling dirt, rocks and soil downward. For example, as water mixes with dirt to form soft mud, the mud cannot support itself against the force of gravity.
    3 Desertification: Its a type of land degradation in which relatively dry area of land becomes increasingly arid, typically losing its bodies of water as well as vegetation and wildlife.

    4 Pollution: When carbon dioxide mixed with the pollution that cars created the realise a toxic air, that when it rains this gas mixed with the water an then it erored the rock.

    For example: Sedimentary rocks offer very little resistance to meteorological phenomena, and their hardness is minimal and its consequences are the desolvation of it.

Sedimentary rocks offer very little resistance to meteorological phenomena, and their hardness is minimal and its consequences are the desolvation of it

              For making these funnier now a scary story  

Time ago, in Madrid from the year 1629 to the middle of the 19th century, prisoners and jailers shared-or inflicted-pain, and death that almost killed everyone in a dangerous epidemic but because of that the thick walls of the Palace witnessed torture, death and heartbreaking cries.

With its transfer to the Oratorio del Salvador del Mundo and, later, to the old Secadero de Tocino, the building entered the world of the legends, as the black legend, like the mantle of the death.  until well into the nineteenth century,


Many of the neighbors of Madrid assured for centuries, and with more or less obstinate conviction, that from these walls came phantom voices, noises and heartbreaking cries. The mystery was then created to explain the sound of complaints and lamentations of the supposed spirits of jailers and those sentenced to death who once occupied passages and chambers of punishments..

WEBLIOGRAPHY

http://www.abc.es/hemeroteca/historico-10-08-2005/abc/Madrid/el-tenebroso-sonido-de-los-grilletes_2190062636.html

http://www.historiasiglo20.org/HE/7e.htm

http://www.aviewoncities.com/madrid/palaciodesantacruz.htmç

http://www.miradormadrid.com/palacio-santa-cruz-carcel-ministerio

http://www.exteriores.gob.es/Portal/es/Ministerio/Historia/Sedes/Paginas/PalacioDeSantaCruz.aspx

http://blog.santiagofajardo.com/2016/12/palacio-de-santa-cruz/

http://www.odec.ca/projects/2004/derk4d0/public_html/differenttypesoferosion.htm