The Marqués de Santa Cruz palace is a building located in the municipality of Viso del Marqués (Ciudad Real), in the autonomous community of Castilla-La Mancha, in Spain. It was built at the end of the 16th century by Álvaro de Bazán, the first marquis of Santa Cruz de Mudela, and is the only Italian-style palace preserved in Spain. It is currently the headquarters of the General Archive of the Navy.

History
It is one of the two palaces built by sailor Álvaro de Bazán, knights of the Order of Santiago, captain of the Ocean Sea and admiral of the Spanish Navy. It is located next to the church of Our Lady of the Assumption, and since 1948 it is rented by its owners, the Marquis of Santa Cruz, to the Spanish Navy, who first assigned it to the Spanish Navy Museum and more later expanded its functions also establishing the General Archive of the Navy.

The building was frequented by the first marquis thanks to its location, halfway between Madrid, where the Court was, and Seville, whose port often went to keep the Spanish Navy anchored there, of which he was admiral during the reign of Felipe II.

The palace was about to be destroyed by Edward Hamilton’s Australian troops during the War of Spanish Succession at the beginning of the 18th century, being saved by the performance of the Marquis chaplain, the poet Carlos de Praves, thanks to which we can admire him today. He suffered some damage because of the Lisbon earthquake in 1755: he sank the ceiling of the hall of honor, where the great fresco depicting the battle of Lepanto had been painted, and topped the four corner towers, which the chronicles of Philip II described as magnificent. In it we can find sailor objects of the time. It attracts attentionfigurehead belonging to a ship directed by the marquis. During the War of Independence, the French devastated him, and by the time the Civil War arrived he had served as a barn, school, stable, jail and hospital, until in 1948, the descendants of Álvaro de Bazán offered it to the Navy as museum-archive, which is currently its function. Likewise, in the nearby parish church there is a crocodile dissected and attached to one of the vaults, which was offered by the marquis as a votive upon the return of one of his trips.

The palace was declared a National Monument in 1931.

Álvaro de Bazán Archive-Museum
The Álvaro de Bazán Archive-Museum is located in the Renaissance palace of the Marquises of Santa Cruz, in Viso del Marques (Ciudad Real). The Palace suffered a significant deterioration during the French invasion, and was later a barn, school and barracks, until in 1948 and given the connection of the family of the Marquises of Santa Cruz with the Navy, they ceded it for rent to the Navy for the symbolic rental of a peseta a year for 90 years. The Navy restored and prepared it as a museum to house the General Archive of the Navy, a historical archive, declared national, which holds 80,000 files with information regarding the history of the Navy from 1784 until the Civil War.

The museum
The Palace of the Marquises of Santa Cruz was built between 1564 and 1586 by order of Álvaro de Bazán, first Marquis of Santa Cruz and admiral of the Navy, who due to his long stays in Italy and influenced by the tastes of the time, hired a select group of Italian artists for the work. Its location, in the middle of Mancha, responds to the admiral’s desire to fix his residence at a strategic point equidistant from the Madrid court and the bases of his squads, in Cádiz, Cartagena and Lisbon.

The main door is formed by a semicircular arch and two large Doric columns, with wide base and pedestal, that support the cornicement on which the large balcony with balustrade and with ephemeral finish of the Bazán shield is located.

The exterior appearance of this great house does not demonstrate the magnificence and artistic richness that it keeps inside. The four towers that the Palace should have had are missing abroad, as confirmed by the book General Population of Spain, published in 1747, eight years before the Lisbon earthquake. The Palace consists of two floors and most of its rooms, as well as the high and low galleries, including the staircase, are painted in fresco. This mural decoration makes it the Spanish pictorial ensemble that best represents classical mythology. It also keeps paintings of epic narrative character, Roman history, lineages or family character, religious and grutescos.

File
With regard to the time of its funds, the Archive contains documents related to the Spanish Navy, with documents mostly between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, although some before 1784 can be found.

With regard to the type of documentation kept in the Archive, documents of the Navy regarding personnel, expeditions, ships, arsenals, factories, academies, Corsican and dams, merchants, post offices, submarines, General Staff, are kept in the same Superior organizations of the Navy, artillery, aeronautics and, finally, captains, license plates and fishing.

The Palace of the Marquises of Santa Cruz, the headquarters of the Archive, has been rented to the Spanish Navy since February 4, 1949 by its owners, the Marquises of Santa Cruz, for a symbolic price, consisting of a one-ticket peseta from that time a year.

In 1985 a Documentary Guide of the Archive was published. In addition, the files of all sections of the fund of the former Ministry of Marine Affairs are available for consultation by researchers.

The General Archive of the Navy is state and national owned; managed by the Ministry of Defense, integrated into the archival subsystem of the Navy, in accordance with the Military Archives Regulation approved by Royal Decree 2598/1998.

Documentary Fund

Main:
– From the Secretary of State and the Office of the Navy.
– From the Ministry of the Navy.
– Of the Maritime and Apostaderos Departments.
– Of Permanent Maritime Courts.

Sections:
– Personal
– Expeditions
– Navy ships
– Coast Guard
– Secretariat and Superior Organisms of the Navy
– Arsenals
– Factories of La Cavada and Liérganes
– Schools and Academies
– Hydrographic Deposit
– Astronomical Observatory
– Traffic lights
– Corsican and Persian
– Registration and Fishing
– Commercial Navigation
– Maritime Post
– Marine Commissions
– Artillery Material
– Torpedoes and Underwater Defenses. Naval Bases
– Economic Administration of the Navy
– Central General Staff
– Statistics
– Awards, Redemptions and Engagement Council
– Charitable Institutions
– Indifferent to Marina
– Historical Archive
– Crosses and Rewards
– Military Commanders
– Port Captaincy
– Naval Aeronautics
– Royal Orders
– Pensions
– Presidios
– Navy Courts.

Series and units:
– Rewards records.
– States of life of armed ships
– States of life of unarmed ships and floating material.
– General states of ships.
– General states of naval forces.
– States of force and life of ships.
– Ship movement states.
– Ship firing exercise states (maritime bettors)
– Ship firing exercise states (maritime departments)
– Ship artillery states.
– States of ordinary and extraordinary services provided by ships
– Files on the state of the insurrection in the Antilles (G. 10 years old).
– News collected daily by the information services on movements of enemy forces.
– Transfer records of political deportees.
– Material acquisition approval records.
– Material acquisition records.
– Ship acquisition records.
– Documentation referral files.
– Information files on ship construction.
– Records on the examination of naval engineering projects.
– Vessel test records.
– Records of bills of naval forces laws.
– Records of assigning names and distinctive signals to ships.
– Information files on foreign naval forces.
– Relations of military personnel: Endowments of Ships, Squads and Bodies of Officers, NCOs, Mariners and Troops, Battalions and Brigades.
– Military personnel relations: dead and campaign survivors (wounded, prisoners, missing, distinguished and repatriated)
– Books correspondence register of the Ministry of the Navy.
– Peace Treaties.
– Correspondence.

Building
Álvaro de Bazán, first marquis of Santa Cruz, knight of the Order of Santiago, captain of the Ocean Sea and admiral of the Navy, ordered two palaces to be built at the end of the 16th century: one in the Plaza Mayor de Valdepeñas, which is not preserved, and another next to the parish church of El Viso del Marqués, which is still preserved and is currently used as the Archive of the Spanish Navy. The Marquis frequented him a lot when he was halfway between the Court in Madrid and the port of Seville, which as a sailor he had to go frequently. His grave is also in the Viso, in which he is buried along with his wife.

It was built between 1564 and 1586 with subsequent modifications, and it is a square- plan and Renaissance- style building articulated around a Renaissance atrium with a lying tomb. The walls and ceilings are covered with double themed frescoes: on the one hand, mythological scenes and, on the other, naval battles and Italian cities related to the military trajectory of the marquis and his relatives. The frescoes are due to Italian Mannerist painters, the Péroli. Seeing them, Felipe II would entrust them with jobs for El Escorial and Alcázar de Toledo.

To raise it, the marquis hired a team of architects, painters and decorators who worked on the work from 1564 to 1586. For some, the design of the building was due to the Italian Giovanni Battista Castello, known as the Bergamasco, who later worked at El Escorial; for others he drew it, at least in his original plan, Enrique Egas el Mozo.

The architecture is perceived as typical Spanish, without the Italian arches, with smooth walls and square towers in the corners, influenced by the austerity of El Escorial and the Alcazar of Toledo, within the harmonic relations characteristic of the Renaissance. The central space is occupied by a porticoed patio that together with the staircase forms a typically Mannerist set understood as an elegant and courtly style that overflows the merely architectural framework. It had four towers that, apparently, collapsed as a result of the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755.

The palace was about to be destroyed by Edward Hamilton’s Australian troops during the War of Spanish Succession at the beginning of the 18th century, being saved by the performance of the Marquis chaplain (Carlos de Praves). It suffered some damage due to the Lisbon earthquake in 1755: it sank the ceiling of the hall of honor, where the great fresco depicting the battle of Lepanto had been painted, and topped the four corner towers. In it we can find sailor objects of the time. It attracts attention a figurehead belonging to a ship that directed the marquis. During the War of Independence, the French devastated him, and by the time the Civil War arrived he had served as a barn, school, stable, jail and hospital… Until in 1948, the descendants of Álvaro de Bazán offered it to the Navy as a museum-archive.

The architecture is perceived as typical Spanish, without the Italian arches, with smooth walls and square towers in the corners, within the harmonic relations characteristic of the Renaissance. The central space is occupied by a porticoed patio, which together with the staircase forms a typically Mannerist set, understood as an elegant and courtly style that overflows the merely architectural framework.

The walls are decorated with 8,000 square meters of Mannerist frescoes made by Giovanni Battista Peroli with the help of Esteban Peroli and César de Bellis. Everyone worked to create a space erected to the greatest glory of its owner: on the one hand, its military virtues had to be exalted, and on the other, its lineage exalted. For the first, they were painted on the walls, vaults and roofs of the palace seen from cities and ports, as well as the bastions and battles in which he had conquered his immense prestige. On both sides of the stairs two statues were located in which he was represented as Neptune (god of the seas, with his trident) and as Mars(god of war), and on the doors of the upper floor were placed the stern fans of the captain ships defeated in the battles, which were the trophies of the sailors. To praise his lineage, and following the same Renaissance tradition of representing men as gods or demigods of antiquity, the ancestors of the marquis and his wives (had two) and children were painted.

These two groups of representations were dressed with trapntojos, paintings that simulated doors, columns and other decorative and architectural elements. And also with grotesque motifs that included mythological animals, vermin and foliage. According to a very varied theme that can be interpreted as a defense of Catholicism defended in Trento.

The sepulchral statues of Don Álvaro de Bazán and his wife Doña María de Figueroa are the only example of funeral sculpture belonging to the first third of the 17th century. They were sculpted by Antonio de Rivera for the Convent of the Conception of Viso del Marqués, and are currently embedded in the wall of the Palace that overlooks the garden. In them, the Marquises appear in prayerful attitude, kneeling in a recliner, all in white marble that stands out with the bluish gray of the niches.

The palace was declared a National Monument in 1931.

Paintings
The walls are decorated with 8,000 square meters of Mannerist frescoes made by Giovanni Battista Peroli with Esteban Peroli and César de Bellis. 3 Everyone worked to create a space erected to the greatest glory of its owner: on the one hand, its military virtues had to be exalted, and on the other, its lineage exalted. For the first, they were painted on the walls, vaults and roofs of the palace seen from cities and ports, as well as the bastions and battles in which he had conquered his immense prestige. On both sides of the stairs two statues were located in which he was represented as Neptune (god of the seas, with his trident) and like Mars (god of war), and on the doors of the upper floor were placed the stern fans of the captain ships defeated in the battles, which were the trophies of the sailors. To praise his lineage, and following the same Renaissance tradition of representing men as gods or demigods of ancient times, the ancestors of the marquis and his wives (had two) and children were painted.

These two groups of representations were dressed with trapntojos, paintings that simulated doors, columns and other decorative and architectural elements; and also with grotesque motifs that included mythological animals, vermin and foliage. According to a very varied theme that can be interpreted as a defense of Catholicism defended in Trento.

Sculptures
The sepulchral statues of Álvaro de Bazán and his wife María de Figueroa, are the only example of funerary sculpture belonging to the first third of the 17th century. They were executed for the convent of the Conception of El Viso del Marqués, being located today in the wall of the Palace closest to the gardens. Its creator was Antonio de Riera, sculptor related to the court of Catalan origin. In them, the Marquis appear in an attitude of prayer, kneeling in a recliner, all in white marble that stands out on the gray of the niches. There is a certain similarity in them with the elegance and classicism of the Leoni, in spite of some formal rigidity, the way in which the fabrics and the detail of the dresses are executed is of special relevance.