Casa Lis

Historia

The Casa Lis is a museum located in the ancient city wall of Salamanca, Spain. Also known as Museo Art Nouveau and Art Déco, it is a museum of decorative arts, with exhibits dating from the last decades of the 19th century to World War II.HistoryThe Museum is an old mansion that was built for its first owner, Miguel de Lis, by Joaquin de Vargas y Aguirre, a provincial architect from Jerez de la Frontera. Don Miguel de Lis was the owner of a tannery which he had inherited from his father. The thriving business gave him a privileged economic position and he was well-travelled; he chose a modernist design.The mansion changed ownership in 1917, when D. Enrique Esperabé de Arteaga, rector of the University of Salamanca, moved there with his family. Subsequently, the Casa Lis was inhabited by various tenants until in the 1970s, closed and unused, and fell into decay. In 1981, the city of Salamanca was able to save it from ruin.SiteVargas planned the house around an interior courtyard that serves to distribute the rooms and designed a facade built with iron and glass following the precepts of industrial architecture. To save the existing slope until reaching the road, they adopted garden terraces and a grotto indoor rockery that lightens the whole. The result is one of the few examples of industrial architecture used for residential use. The North facade of the house is one of the few examples of modernist architecture in Salamanca.The gateway is built in stone and brick. Inside, the House had rooms for summer and winter, the first on the ground floor and the second, in the main. An office, canteen, oratory, bathrooms, lounges and greenhouse were included. Electric light was provided in the original. The decoration was modernist with stained glass windows in the courtyard gallery, the doors and the transom of the main staircase.

"El Museo Art Nouveau y Art Déco es un museo de artes decorativas desde las últimas décadas del siglo XIX hasta la II Guerra Mundial.A través de sus diecinueve colecciones Joyas, porcelanas, abanicos, muñecas, criselefantinas, pintura, muebles, vidrios, bronces..., el recorrido por sus salas muestra al visitante la producción de los talleres europeos de artes decorativas de los periodos Nouveau y Déco.Su sede se encuentra en la Casa Lis, edificio modernista con destacados elementos de la arquitectura del hierro y vidrieras de tal delicioso cromatismo que se ha convertido en una de las imágenes más representativas de Salamanca."