Palacio de Monterrey (Monterey Palace), Salamanca

The Monterrey Palace is a building in the Spanish city of Salamanca, one of the greatest exponents of the Plateresque artistic style. Built by the III Count of Monterrey, it is currently owned by the Casa de Alba, which is the owner of said county. It was a highly admired and imitated building in the 19th century, giving rise to the so-called Monterrey or Neoplateresque style, a historicism that took up the Plateresque aesthetic.

It was declared a National Historic Monument, equivalent to the current term BIC with the category of Monument, on May 6, 1929.2 Since May 2018 the building is open to tourist visits.

The Monterrey Palace was built —in the Italian Renaissance style— by Don Alonso de Zúñiga y Acevedo Fonseca, III Count of Monterrey. Rodrigo Gil de Hontañón and Fray Martín de Santiago drew up the plans for the palace, and Pedro de Ibarra and Pedro de Miguel y Aguirre began construction on January 18, 1539. Since then it would become one of the most representative works of the Spanish Renaissance.

The Monterrey palace has had a notable influence on many Spanish buildings from the 19th and 20th centuries, such as the Palace of the Diputación de Palencia, the work of Jerónimo Arroyo from 1916, the Archaeological Museum of Seville by Aníbal González from 1919 or the Cavalry Academy of Valladolid by Adolfo Pierrad from 1924.

In May 2018 the palace was opened to tourist visits as a museum space. This building houses valuable works of art, as well as a varied collection of furniture, tapestries, porcelain.