170. Paredes-Saavedra House

The Paredes-Saavedra Palace House is a small-sized urban fortress located within the walled enclosure of the city of Caceres, built between the XV and XVI centuries.

The palace house, organized into three floors around a small asymmetrical interior atrium and with a courtyard at its rear, is the result of the construction of different spaces built in different periods, forming an asymmetrical organization of structural walls. Its trimmed tower, from the age of the Catholic Monarchs (Queen Isabel of Castilla and King Fernando II of Aragon), can be considered a significant element of Caceres' civil architecture.

The renovation of this palace house is carried out to accommodate eleven rooms that complement the existing fourteen rooms in the Atrio Relais Chateaux Hotel. The new rooms are diversely adapted to the existing spaces in the palace house, aiming to make the most of the existing spaces and their specific conditions.

The intervention is based on maintaining the existing structure while incorporating contemporary wooden architecture that covers the existing surfaces like an interior garment. This includes wooden vaults on the ground floor and wooden coffered ceilings on the two upper floors.

The renovation clearly defines a diagonal sequence of spaces from Ancha Street to San Pedro Street, passing through the vaulted entrance hall, where a site-specific artwork by the artist José Pedro Croft has been showcased. It also includes the asymmetrical atrium with a sequence of brick vaults supported by two Doric columns, and the exterior courtyard with a small pool. The intervention is complemented by the raising of the tower with the aim of improving the city's skyline, especially on Ancha Street.

The renovation and rehabilitation of the Paredes-Saavedra Palace House seeks to envision the city based on the principles that made it possible, imagining how this can be carried out in our time. Thus, the rehabilitation is a respectful proposal that coexists with the character of the place it occupies, aiming to live in harmony with dignity, tradition and contemporaneity.