La Calahorra Castle

Rarely is a building's exterior as deceptive as it is at La Calahorra. From afar, perched on its hill at an altitude of 1,250 metres, the castle looks like a sober, almost forbidding military hulk keeping watch over the entire Marquesado del Zenete. Yet step inside its walls and you find refined, magnificent decoration that makes it one of the pioneering works of the Renaissance in Spanish civil architecture.

The secret of that interior lies in Italy. Materials, techniques and artists were brought from there to adorn it, which is why it is considered the first major work in Spain where the involvement of Italian masters is documented. The works were initially directed by Lorenzo Vázquez, from Segovia, but his disagreements with the Marquis of Cenete led to the commission passing to the Genoese Michele Carlone. He carved the Carrara marble in his workshop in Genoa, from where it arrived ready-worked at the port of Almería, and later moved to the castle itself to oversee the assembly and the pieces made with local materials.

Stonemasons from Lombardy, Genoa and Carrara all took part in the carving, which explains certain differences in style from one area to another. Even so, the whole conveys a surprising unity, something that sets it apart from its contemporary sibling, Vélez-Blanco Castle. Everything was done quickly: the decoration was completed between 1509 and 1512, and part of the stonework from the Moorish fortress that previously stood on the hill was reused to build it.

Its history adds a further point of interest. The castle was born of the entailed estate that Cardinal Mendoza founded for his son, Don Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, and it is something of an anomaly for its time: while the Crown was ordering fortresses to be demolished to curb the power of the old feudal nobility, the mighty House of Mendoza was allowed to build this one. Today it belongs to the Diputación de Granada (Granada Provincial Council), which has opened it to the public.