The UNESCO-listed historic centre of the Mexican city of Queretaro, about 2 hours north of Mexico City, is a treasure house of New World baroque architecture, of which the chief secular jewel is the Casa de la Marquesa.
The façade of the Casa de la Marquesa.
Built in the mid-18C as an aristocratic residence, it’s now run as an elegant boutique hotel. I didn’t stay there, but I went for a meal in the excellent restaurant.
In some ways, the Kingdom of New Spain, centred in what we now call Mexico, was at its height in the Versailles Century (1682-1789).
It certainly reached its greatest territorial extent in the 1700s, as the map below illustrates.
By Eddo – Own workFile:BlankMap-World-90W.svgFile:New Spain.pngFile:Nueva España 1795.pngFile:Spanish Provinces in the Pacific.png, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11435488
The light green areas represent the last areas to be claimed by the Spanish before the onset of the Napoleonic Wars and the War of Independence, which resulted in the collapse of Spanish rule and Mexico’s independence in 1821, not to mention that of the other countries of Central and South America.
The Versailles Century (1682-1789) played out all over the world, thanks in large part to the colonial empires of the European powers, particularly Spain and Portugal. The latter’s easternmost possession, Macau, is home to the beautiful St. Joseph’s Church.
Macau’s most famous church is of course St. Paul’s, of which only the iconic facade remains. Most visitors to Macau see (or are taken to see) no other church.
The world-famous ruined facade of St. Paul’s, the iconic sight of Macau.
The victim of a catastrophic fire in 1834, St. Paul’s had also previously been the home of the first European institution of higher learning in the Far East, St. Paul’s College.
Porto, Portugal’s second city, was founded in Roman times, but came into its own during the Versailles Century.
Porto’s historic heart with the cathedral and archbishop’s palace on the hilltop.
Brazilian gold flowing across the Atlantic after the discovery of the precious yellow metal in Minas Gerais in the 1690s, combined with the boom in the port wine trade after the signing of the Methuen Treaty with Great Britain in 1703, made Porto rich. Much of the loot was spent on spectacular churches. Modern visitors to the city will find the built heritage of the northern Portuguese Baroque all around them. The star exhibits are the buildings designed by the transplant Nicolau Nasoni (1691-1773), an all-around talent who arrived from Italy to execute some paintings for the archbishop and stayed for the rest of his life, undertaking not only paintings, but interior design and architecture.
