Casa de las Flores: Neruda's House of Flowers
Why is it significant?
Stand on the corner and take in the whole block: warm red brick, rows of balconies, and on almost every one, pots of geraniums and trailing green. It is an entire block of flats, wrapped around a big inner garden that you can glimpse through the arches.
Key Facts
| Place | Casa de las Flores: Neruda's House of Flowers |
|---|---|
| Address | Calle de Rodríguez San Pedro 72, 28015 Madrid, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 40.43250, -3.71630 |
| Part of Walk | Dukes, Monks and an Egyptian Temple: Madrid's Conde Duque to Templo de Debod |
| Generated | Generated |
Stand on the corner and take in the whole block: warm red brick, rows of balconies, and on almost every one, pots of geraniums and trailing green. It is an entire block of flats, wrapped around a big inner garden that you can glimpse through the arches.
This is the Casa de las Flores, the House of Flowers, designed by the architect Secundino Zuazo and finished in the early 1930s. It was a quiet revolution in housing. Instead of the dark inner courtyards of old Madrid, Zuazo gave the tenants a garden in the middle, light from both sides of every flat, and balconies made for plants. Architects still come to study it.
In 1934 a young Chilean diplomat moved in. He was the consul of Chile, and he was also a poet called Pablo Neruda. His flat became one of the liveliest literary salons in Madrid. Federico García Lorca came to visit, and so did Rafael Alberti, Miguel Hernández and many of the young poets later grouped as the Generation of 1927. They read aloud, argued and stayed late into the night under these balconies.
It did not last. In July 1936 the Civil War began, and by that November this district of Argüelles lay close to the front line, as Franco's troops reached the western edge of Madrid. The building was damaged and Neruda left Spain. In a famous poem written soon afterwards, he remembered his house, its flowers and its friends... and the war that had broken into all of them.
Today the geraniums are back, and the House of Flowers is simply home to Madrid families again. From here, walk south along Calle de la Princesa. On your left, behind tall railings and a screen of trees, hides a palace that most people pass without ever noticing it. It belongs to one of the oldest noble families in Europe.