The Casa de las Flores is a block of flats in the

Chamberí Chamberí is a district of Madrid Madrid ( ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in Spain, most populous municipality of Spain. It has almost 3.5 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population ...

district of

Madrid Madrid ( ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in Spain, most populous municipality of Spain. It has almost 3.5 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 7 million. It i ...

, designed by Secundino Zuazo in 1931. The distribution of spaces with its central landscaped corridor has provided a model for architecture students studying the fifties and sixties. It is located on the corner of

Calle de la Princesa The calle de la Princesa is a street in Madrid, Spain. Description The street, starting at the Plaza de España (Madrid), Plaza de España sort of is a North-West prolongation of the Gran Vía (Madrid), Gran Vía. It forms the limit between the ...

(Hilarión Eslava, Rodríguez San Pedro, Gaztambide and Meléndez Valdés streets), and has balconies decorated with flower boxes, from which the name of the building is derived. The poet

Pablo Neruda Pablo Neruda ( ; ; born Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto; 12 July 190423 September 1973) was a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician who won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature. Neruda became known as a poet when he was 13 years old an ...

lived in this house in 1934,Edmundo Olivares Briones, (1980), ''Pablo Neruda: los caminos del mundo : tras las huellas del poeta itinerante'', Ed. Lom and the writer Emilio Carrere lived in it until his death. In 1981, the building began the process of being registered as a ''bien de interés cultural'' (cultural heritage) site.

History

The house could have been designed by the German architect Michael Fleischer, who in those years collaborated in the Secundino Zuazo studio. The block of flats was commissioned by the Banco Hispano Colonial that financed the project with the help of the Instituto Nacional de Previsión; the house was an early part of the Plan Castro for the expansion of Madrid. It was completed just at the moment of the proclamation of the Second Republic. When Pablo Neruda was appointed consul in Madrid in 1934, his friend

Rafael Alberti Rafael Alberti Merello (16 December 1902 – 28 October 1999) was a Spanish poet, a member of the Generation of '27. He is considered one of the greatest literary figures of the so-called ''Silver Age'' of Spanish Literature, and he won numer ...

found this house for him as a place to live. During the defence of Madrid during the

Civil War A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same Sovereign state, state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies.J ...

, the Battle of Ciudad Universitaria occurred near the house, which caused it to suffer great damage. The house was restored in the forties. In 1981 it was declared a

National Monument A national monument is a monument constructed in order to commemorate something of importance to national heritage, such as a country's founding, independence, war, or the life and death of a historical figure. The term may also refer to a sp ...

Characteristics

The five-story building was built in brick, the ground floor has a series of elliptical

arches An arch is a curved vertical structure span (engineering), spanning an open space underneath it. Arches may support the load above them, or they may perform a purely decorative role. As a decorative element, the arch dates back to the 4th mill ...

that coincide with the arcade supports and the windows of some stores. It has two hundred and eighty-eight houses arranged in three landscaped courtyards, of which the central one is the larger. The floors are distributed in a double linear block: two blocks arranged in parallel, with the stair cases arranged as bridges.

References

{{Commons category, Casa de las Flores, Madrid Buildings and structures in Gaztambide neighborhood, Madrid