Mondragón Palace - Marqués de Villasierra Palace
Museum of Ronda

One of the city’s landmark buildings, the Palace of Mondragon, known also as the Palace of the Marquis of Villasierra, is composed of two well-defined areas pertaining to two different historic and style periods, the Moorish and the Renaissance.

Its origins appear to be, without doubt, Moorish, being arranged, as is every palace of the period of Muslim tradition, around a central patio from which each part of the building can be accessed. The twisted entrance to this patio from what was once the main doorway, located at the wall, shows the Islamic influence of this small palace, as do the decorations that still exist, which have a direct relation to houses found in Granada.

With the conquest of the city by the Catholic Monarchs (1485), in which it was common to divide houses into groups of two or three, and over the course of the centuries, the original core suffered a series of reforms which consisted of the addition of two more houses, which were arranged,, as before, around a patio. The most graceful of these is the entrance patio, with an L-shaped gallery supported by semicircular archways above Corinthian columns, whilst in the other, with a complete gallery, it is formed by wooden beams that rest upon an eclectic-style group of columns.

On the building’s monumental front, flanked by towers, the is a Baroque doorway that is clearly a later addition, as it bears no relation to the rest of the building.

The most outstanding feature of this harmoniously beautiful building’s interior is the magnificent coffered ceiling that over the Salon Noble, a true gem of Moorish art.

This palace is also home to the Museum of Ronda, the city’s historical museum.