Palace of the Marqués de Dos Aguas

There is no more over-the-top doorway in Valencia. In front of you, the Palace of the Marqués de Dos Aguas unfolds in alabaster: two giants pouring water from their jars, animals, fruit and foliage that seem to spill over the stone, and an image of the Virgin at the top. This is rococo pushed to the limit.

1A palace for showing off

Around 1740, Ginés Rabassa de Perellós, Marquis of Dos Aguas, completely transformed his family's house. He commissioned the design from the painter and engraver Hipólito Rovira, who also covered the façade with frescoes, and the carving of the doorway from the sculptor Ignacio Vergara. The two giants allude to the “two waters”, dos aguas, of the title: the most widespread interpretation identifies them with the rivers Turia and Júcar.

2The work of a madman?

A legend grew up around Rovira: that such an unbridled design could only have come from a disturbed mind, and that the painter ended up losing his reason. His biographies record that his physical and mental health deteriorated in his final years and that he died in Valencia in 1765. The idea that madness dictated the doorway belongs to popular imagination.

Rovira's frescoes have not survived: damp damaged them, and in the nineteenth century they were replaced by the stucco you see today.

The State bought the palace in 1949, and since 1954 it has housed the González Martí National Museum of Ceramics and Decorative Arts, with an eighteenth-century gilded carriage that looks straight out of a fairy tale.

3What to look for

• The two giants with their jars gushing water.
• The Virgin in the niche, at the top of the doorway.
• The wavy window frames, which carry the movement of the doorway across the whole façade.