Palacio de Longoria: Art Nouveau and the House of Songwriters
Why is it significant?
Stand at the corner and watch the building seem to melt: walls that ripple instead of standing straight, stone that sprouts leaves and flowers, iron balconies that twist like seaweed, and a rounded corner that refuses to be a corner at all. In a city of granite and brick, this is a shock.
Key Facts
| Place | Palacio de Longoria: Art Nouveau and the House of Songwriters |
|---|---|
| Address | Calle de Fernando VI 4, 28004 Madrid, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 40.42530, -3.69670 |
| Part of Walk | From the Dos de Mayo to La Movida: Malasaña & Chueca, Madrid's Rebel Quarters |
| Generated | Generated |
Stand at the corner and watch the building seem to melt: walls that ripple instead of standing straight, stone that sprouts leaves and flowers, iron balconies that twist like seaweed, and a rounded corner that refuses to be a corner at all. In a city of granite and brick, this is a shock.
It was built at the start of the twentieth century, around 1902 to 1904, by the architect José Grases Riera for the financier Javier González Longoria. Madrid mostly preferred sober, official styles, so the Palacio de Longoria is a rare thing: the purest example of Art Nouveau, modernismo, in the capital, closer in spirit to Gaudí's Barcelona than to the palaces of the Castellana.
Since 1950 the palace has belonged to the SGAE, the Sociedad General de Autores y Editores, the society that collects royalties for Spain's songwriters, composers and authors. Its origins go back to 1899, when the composer Ruperto Chapí, the man behind the zarzuela La Revoltosa, and the writer Sinesio Delgado founded a society of Spanish authors so that the people who wrote the music and the plays, and not the middlemen, would control the money their works earned.
Think about what that means. Every time a song by a Movida band plays on the radio, in a bar in Malasaña or at a Pride concert in Chueca, a little stream of money flows back to its creators, and for decades much of that accounting has passed through this extraordinary house. Inside, a famous staircase curls upward beneath a glass skylight, as sinuous as the façade.
There is a nice irony in it: a banker's dream palace ended up as the home of the musicians. Now follow Calle de Fernando VI east, a street named after the king you are about to meet, to the Plaza de las Salesas and its great church.