Linares Palace

Before you, opposite Cibeles, stands the Linares Palace, now home to the Casa de América. Few buildings in Madrid combine so much luxury with so many rumours.

1What the records say

The palace was commissioned by José de Murga y Reolid and his wife, Raimunda de Osorio y Ortega, the first Marquis and Marchioness of Linares. They bought the plot from the City Council in 1872 and work began in 1877, under the municipal architect Carlos Colubí, to designs by Adolf Ombrecht. The couple moved in in 1884, although the work was not finished until 1900. After years of disuse, the building was restored and opened in 1992 as the Casa de América.

2The legend of Raimunda

According to Madrid gossip, José’s father opposed his love for Raimunda, a young woman of humble origins, because she was in fact his own daughter: the couple would have been half-siblings. Discovering this after they were married, they supposedly obtained a papal bull allowing them to live together in chastity. The story adds that they had a daughter, whom they supposedly made disappear to avoid a scandal, and whose crying can still be heard in the drawing rooms.

No historical evidence has been found of any kinship between the Marquis and Marchioness, nor of the existence of that daughter.

The legend grew while the palace stood empty in the 1980s, when there was even talk of ghostly voices on recordings. In 1990 the journalist Torcuato Luca de Tena published an article in ABC debunking many of those rumours.

3What to look out for

• The façade, richly ornate, in Neo-Baroque taste.
• The gardens surrounding the building.
• The Casa de América, which organises guided tours of the reception rooms: check its website.