Lonja de Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Aragon, Spain, Europe
The Lonja de Zaragoza is a civil building of Renaissance style built in the first half of the sixteenth century in Zaragoza (1541-1551) as an enclosure for economic activities. Today it is the exhibition hall of the City Hall. The architect or master of works of La Lonja was Juan de Sariñena, in charge of this initiative of the city council and sponsored by the archbishop of the city, Hernando de Aragón. This is the most important Renaissance building in Aragon. It was also the first to adopt this style, influenced by the Florentine palace of the Italian quattrocento, although with the nuances of the Aragonese Mudejar that we can observe in the decoration of portraits of polychrome plaster. The building material is brick, which is common in Aragonese architecture, where it is not considered as poor material thanks to the influence of Islamic art (which we can observe in La Aljafería) and the Mudejar. Of rectangular plan, it is structured in its facades in three heights, that do not reflect the interior volume, of a unique floor, plus an attic or false that served as a store of arms. In height there is a gallery of semicircular arches. On February 18, 1541, the municipality of Zaragoza, in response to the requests of the merchants of the city and Archbishop Hernando de Aragon, decided to construct a civil building for commercial exchanges, which until that time had been carried out in La Seo and other churches. The work was awarded to the project of Juan de Sariñena, master of works of the city and the Diputación del Reino, which had already intervened in buildings such as the New Tower or the Seo de Barbastro. In 1546 the construction was very advanced, only in absence of the roof that, according to the design of Sariñena, included a tower like lantern like central shot. This structure posed great problems to the masters of Zaragoza works of that time - among them Alonso de Leznes, Gil Morlanes the Young man and the mason master Juan de Segura -, and to the difficulties was added the death the previous year of the architect Juan Of Sariñena. Finally, in 1549, it was decided to eliminate the tower and cover the work with a simple roof to four waters. The first of November of 1551 La Lonja had been officially finished. The functional necessity of a civil building destined to the commerce determined the approach of the market as a diaphanous interior space of three naves and five sections of the same height, with eight columns ringed to 2/3 that support fifteen vaults of crucería starry and very lowered . The columns are of Renaissance inspiration, but the cover maintains the complex crucería structures of the final gothic. The walls are raised with the technique of rejola and aljez (brick with plaster mortar), in the style of the Mudejar alarms tradition, bearing in mind that stone is a scarce material in the city. However, the ornamental weaves typical of the religious constructions of the Aragonese Mudejar were replaced in the Lonja by a band of depressed vertical rectangles, that divide in two the height of the facade to the outside, supported in a molding of imposta or cornice, adorned with Denticles. In the upper floor of the outer walls, there is an airy gallery of double arches that houses twin windows - from their origin closed with glass of small plated pieces (something unusual until the 18th century), although now restored with separate alabaster plates By a simple pillar. In the tympanum that form the double arches, a polychrome ceramic medallion with ornamental portraits is placed, as well as under the windows and between the spaces of the viewpoint of the upper part of the cloths. The facade has a wide eaves carved in wood and four small lanterns, with mudéjar decoration of tiles, in the angles of the building. In the lower floor three large doors open in the central sections of the ground floor, with arches of flared point in an arrangement that imitates the archivolts and framed in the reinterpretation of a highlighted alfiz in the brick. All the elements of the brick stand are sober and collaborate in the rhythmic arrangement of a harmonious facade and new design, which reinterprets the Italian Renaissance palaces.
LA LONJA DE MERCADERES DE ZARAGOZA
Visita LAGARTO ROJO, revista cultural de viajes:
La Lonja de Mercaderes de Zaragoza es uno de los palacios renacentistas más grandiosos de España. Usado por los comerciantes del Reino de Aragón para sus negocios, hoy es la principal sala de exposiciones del Ayuntamiento de la ciudad. Al exterior rezuma sencillez y elegancia, al interior muestra el esplendor de la que fue en el siglo XVI una de las ciudades más ricas de Europa.