Upper Floor - The Palatial Residence
The upper floor can only be visited as part of a 30-minute guided tour which departs at regular intervals in different languages. The rooms on the upper floor form part of the private residence and include paintings dating from the 16th to the 19th centuries, including the Pietà by Sebastiano del Piombo. Original frescoes from the 16th century have been discovered under the cal (lime) that covered the walls of the palace when it was used as a hospital in the 20th century.
Don Fadrique ordered the construction of new rooms on the upper floor, filling them with magnificent coffered ceilings and, in 1539, decorating them with murals. Important sections of these can still be seen, a series of portraits of "famous men" of antiquity in the gallery and another, inspired by Petrarch, depicts the Triumph of the Four Seasons.
In this meeting place of Golden-Age humanists, one of its members, Francisco Pacheco, further enriched these rooms by painting the ceilings for the third Duke of Alcalá. Today this floor recreates the interiors of a house-palace and exhibits pieces from the Medinaceli art collection: period furniture and tapestries, and paintings by Goya, Tintoretto, Luca Giordano, Giuseppe Recco, Carreño de Miranda, and Vanvitelli.
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