Qualla: Palacio Taranco

Palacio Taranco: Introduction

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jesús Cubela, Public domain. The men who drew the Petit Palais and shaped the colonnades of Paris also designed this corner of Montevideo. Stand on the Plaza Zabala, in the oldest part of the city, and the Palacio Taranco looks as though a slice of the Right Bank drifted across the Atlantic and settled here, all carved stone, mansard roofline, and tall French windows. It is no accident. When the Taranco Ortiz family wanted a home worthy of their fortune, they hired Charles Louis Girault and Jules Chifflot Leon, two French architects with the credentials to match the ambition.

Read more: Palacio Taranco on Qualla

Image: Jesús Cubela | Public domain

Palacio Taranco: A Theatre Beneath the Palace

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dr. Blofeld, CC BY-SA 2.0. Before the palace, there was a stage. The ground where the Taranco now stands held Montevideo's first theatre, built in 1793, when the city was still a walled colonial outpost on the edge of the Spanish empire. By the early twentieth century that old playhouse was gone, and on it...

Read more: Palacio Taranco on Qualla

Image: Dr. Blofeld | CC BY-SA 2.0

Palacio Taranco: From Family Home to National Treasure

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nati Fariña, CC BY-SA 3.0. For decades the palace was a private residence, its rooms filled with European furniture, paintings, and tapestries gathered with a collector's care. That changed in 1943, when the Uruguayan state purchased the house along with much of its furniture and its works of art. The tran...

Read more: Palacio Taranco on Qualla

Image: Nati Fariña | CC BY-SA 3.0

Palacio Taranco: Rooms Full of Centuries

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jose castillo urquiza, CC BY-SA 3.0. Walk the ground floor and you move through the eighteenth century. Inlaid furniture in the styles of Louis XV and Louis XVI sits beneath canvases by Spanish masters, among them Jusepe de Ribera, whose dark, dramatic figures hang alongside work by the Flemish painter David Teniers...

Read more: Palacio Taranco on Qualla

Image: Jose castillo urquiza | CC BY-SA 3.0

Palacio Taranco: Architects of an Empire's Capital

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MaxiCiccone, CC BY-SA 3.0. It is worth pausing on the men who designed this place, because their resumes explain its grandeur. Charles Louis Girault was no provincial draftsman. He won France's prestigious Prix de Rome and went on to design the Petit Palais for the 1900 Paris Exposition, the great world's ...

Read more: Palacio Taranco on Qualla

Image: MaxiCiccone | CC BY-SA 3.0

Palacio Taranco: Where the Government Still Gathers

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gabriela Agra Porter, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Taranco is no museum frozen behind velvet rope. The Uruguayan government still uses it as a place to meet, hosting officials and visiting dignitaries beneath its painted ceilings. A photograph from 2010 captures Uruguayan officials in conversation in its salons, the past and ...

Read more: Palacio Taranco on Qualla

Image: Gabriela Agra Porter | CC BY-SA 3.0