page_title: Romanesque architecture in Spain
section_title: Civil buildings
hierarchical_section_title: Romanesque architecture in Spain / Civil and military architecture / Civil buildings
caption_attribution_description: Portada del palacio de Pedro I el Cruel. Cuéllar (Segovia España). Autor de la imagen: Lourdes Cardenal, noviembre de 2005.
context_page_description: Romanesque architecture in Spain is the architectural style reflective of Romanesque architecture, with peculiar influences both from architectural styles outside the Iberian peninsula via Italy and France as well as traditional architectural patterns from within the peninsula. Romanesque architecture was developed in and propagated throughout Europe for more than two centuries, ranging approximately from the late tenth century until well into the thirteenth century.
  During the eighth century, though Carolingian Renaissance extended its influence to Christian Western Europe, Christian Spain remained attached to the traditional Hispano-Roman and Gothic culture, without being influenced by European cultural movements, until the arrival of the Romanesque.
  Romanesque architecture spread throughout the entire northern half of Spain, reaching as far as the Tagus river, at the height of the Reconquista and Repoblación, movements which greatly favoured the Romanesque development.
context_section_description: Domestic buildings, including palaces, had no great pretensions. Houses were built of flimsy material (as opposed to the grandeur of the churches) and were unable to stand the test of time. When they wished to give importance to the civil architecture, the little that there was transformed and the new one was built with Gothic tendencies. So it was with the so-called Romanesque palace of Diego Gelmírez in Santiago de Compostela, which is actually a totally Gothic factory, or buildings of Segovia sinecures from the Middle Ages.
  There is the famous palace of Dona Berenguela in the city of Leon, called a Romanesque palace, but its structure and planning actually correspond to the last years of the late Middle Ages, far from Romanesque, though it retains (perhaps from outside the original location) some Romanesque windows. There is also, in Cuéllar, the Palace of Peter the Cruel, the origin of which is supposed to date from the time of the Repoblación. Maybe part of its foundations are Romanesque, but the current building is from the early fourteenth century, even though it has a Romanesque portal that was perhaps inherited from the previous building or reused from another. This palace is however considered as one of the few examples of civil Romanesque. Traditionally, buildings that have a good portal with a semicircular arch and large segments have been called "Romanesque" houses or palaces, but they are actually structures from the Gothic era.
  An example of what could be a Romanesque palace built in stone is seen in the façade of the Palace of the Kings of Navarre in Estella, Navarre.
caption: Romanesque portal of the palace of Peter the Cruel in Cuéllar.
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