Cervantes House

Casa Cervantes is a modern construction built by Víctor Beltrí in 1900 at the popular street Calle Mayor of Cartagena

House works began in the year 1897 on request of Serafín Cervantes Contreras, an important magnate from the mining hills of Cartagena-La Unión. The house, inaugurated on February 26, 1900, was the first request received by the architect Víctor Beltrí in Cartagena and an opportunity to open the city to modernism. The work of Beltrí created such a good impression at the time that he received many job offers by the merchant middle class of Cartagena.

 

There was a cultural area and library inside the house, which currently belongs to Caja Mediterráneo. The building has four floors built in different construction materials: marble in the lower ground and central axis, artificial stones in the entries, dust-coats and pilasters, and brick in the remaining walls. The large number of symbols to do with commerce, industry and mining, are included in a large variety of heraldic emblems related to the house owner, whose initials are also embedded in the house ornaments. One of the main features of the facade are its viewpoints, typical of Cartagena, as well as the modernist motives of lintels, entries and dust-coats.

 

The inside was decorated by the Cartagenian sculptor Francisco Requena Hernández and the Murcian painter Antonio de la Torre. After a number of refurbishments promoted by the bank that owns the property, only the original facade of the building remains.