Built in 1539 for the third Count of Monterrey, the palace was designed along the lines of Spain’s great royal castles by two of 16C Salamanca’s greatest architects: Rodrigo Gil de Hontañon et Martìn de Santiago. The varied decorative and ornamental elements – Italian gallery and loggias on the upper storey, surmounting balustrade bedecked with trophies and pinnacles, chimneys, turrets and coats of arms – are expertly handled to give the palace its Renaissance style.