★★★★★ 5.0
Discover
La Casa Grande
In July of 1973, this sprawling mansion on Calle Madrid 2 in Torrejón de Ardoz was officially declared a ruin... abandoned, crumbling, left for dead. But then one man, industrial entrepreneur Rafael Onieva Ariza, stepped in and saw something everyone else missed—four hundred years of royal Spanish history waiting to be resurrected. What's in front of you is La Casa Grande, a sixteenth-century royal estate founded in 1595 by the Empress María de Austria, sister to Felipe II himself. This wasn't just any residence. The Jesuits who managed it were tasked with feeding the Imperial College in Madrid, so they built the largest agricultural hacienda on the Castilian plateau—over ten thousand square meters—producing wine, olive oil, cheese, and honey. The restoration took until 1989, but walk inside and you'll see it was worth every stone. The Icon Museum here houses over twelve hundred pieces, the most comprehensive collection in all of Western Europe, spanning from the fifteenth century to the twentieth. And if you venture down, those underground wine caves and colonial-era cellars? Still functional after more than four centuries. This isn't just history—it's a place that refused to stay buried.
Did You Know?
- :La Casa Grande in Torrejón de Ardoz was originally founded in the 16th century by Empress Maria of Austria as a royal estate, and later entrusted to the Jesuits, making it a unique blend of royal and religious history that played a role in Spain’s cultural and spiritual life for centuries.
- The estate is home to the Museo de Iconos, which houses a rare collection of religious icons—many of which are centuries old and reflect the artistic traditions of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, a distinctive feature not commonly found in Spanish museums.
- A curious wooden plaque in the patio tells the story of the house’s origins, and according to local lore, the building’s solid structure has withstood the strong Levante winds for generations, giving rise to tales of the mansion ‘rocking’ with the wind and ‘sleeping’ under the midday sun—a poetic image often shared with children visiting the site.