Palau Moxó

Palau Moxó is a baroque palace in Barcelona. It went up in the eighteenth century for the Moxó family, barons of Montcortès and later marquises of Sant Mori. You enter under a great stone archway, cross a vaulted double vestibule, and step out into an open courtyard. The rooms gather around that court on five levels, under a sloped roof and a walkable terrace.

The ground had earlier held a Castelló house that became tied to the Graell family by marriage in the mid-seventeenth century. The Graell heir hired master builder Francesc Mestres i Guitart to rebuild it, buying neighbouring land at heavy cost. He died without heirs, and the house passed to his sister Josepa, wife of Francesc Bonaventura de Moxó i Ninot. Each generation of Moxós left its own mark on the building. For nearly three centuries the halls hosted receptions and gatherings of the city's high society. Agnès de Moxó, last of the line, lived in the private quarters until the family sold the palace. Barcelona lists the building as local cultural heritage, and a new owner has turned it into luxury residences and event spaces.

The way up is a grand covered staircase, vaulted on Tuscan columns and counted among Barcelona's finest baroque staircases. It leads to the main floor, where a gallery of semicircular arches runs along three sides of the court. The Sant Mori Hall, the largest, has an allegorical ceiling of zodiac, arts and seasons beneath a Baccarat crystal chandelier. Its walls once wore silk from the Philippines, since replaced. The library fills the old kitchen, its white marble fireplace carved with the family crest. Back down at courtyard level, the former stables keep their brick vaults. A blocked stone arch there is perhaps all that survives of the earlier Caçador palace.