THE BUILDING

The baroque style building is distinguished from others of its kind by its remarkable height. It has two principal facades, the main one on the Mercaderes street, and the other one facing the Plaza de la Catedral. The fact of having two facades with their corresponding porticos, makes the building unique and interesting.

The facade on the Mercaderes street has an impressive entrance in contrast to the sober appearance of the facade. It covers the ground floor and the mezzanine. The upper floor has beautiful forged iron rejeíra balconies. This entrance leads to the inner courtyard with a fountain surrounded by galleries. The ground is paved with stone slabs. During the excavations in the courtyard, a part of the Zanja Real (Royal Ditch), the first water channel built in Havana, was found, and it is covered with a glass case for the visitors. The rooms on the ground floor contain some panels at the walls with photos demonstrating the situation of the mansion before the restoration. The milestones of the history of the house is given on a panel. To the left there is a sumptuous Italian-style staircase with mural paintings that leads to the upper floor. The mezzanine can be accessed by another spiral staircase.

Through the gallery with wooden ceiling that is paved with a checkered marble, you will enter the sitting room of the mansión, called as the Sala Ambiente (Decorative Room). The wooden parqueted room is decorated with good preserved mural paintings. On the right, there is a wooden sitting group, consisting of medallion chairs with lattice backrest, and on the left a piano, manufactured by the North American company Steinway & Sons and a superb polyphon changer with a rescued disc ready to play. Polyphon is a disc-playing music box, a mechanical device invented in Germany in 1870. The room is illuminated by five Bohemia crystal chandeliers and wall apliques. From the room you can access one of the three balconies of the upper floor facing to the Mercaderes street, from where you can get a good view of the striking mural by Cuban artist Andrés Carillo on the opposite wall, depicting 67 important artistic, literary and intellectual figures of the 19th century.

The bedroom is located between the sitting room and the dining room, adjacent to the Casa de Lombillo. The floor is paved with white veined marble, like in the dining room. In the austere decorated bedroom, there is the wooden bedstead and the makeup table with several makeup objects, like the hand mirror, combs, perfume bottles. Adjacent to the bedroom, there is the bathroom with a marble bathtub and the flower textured porcelain washbasin with soap dishes.

The dining room is located on the west part of the building, looking to the Plaza de la Catedral. The flying buttress windows with fine stained-glass that were added to the upper floor at the time of Ignacio Peñalver y Cárdenas, are a distinguishing feature of the building, but these are in contrast with the rectangular door in the opposite corner that opens to the balcony. The room contains a long, ornamented dining table for 14 persons at maximum. Particularly, the crystal glassware is exceptional. The china closet with mirror has excellent wood carving.

The facade of the house facing the Plaza de la Catedral is much more ornamented than the other facade on the Mercaderes street, but it is asymmetrical, as it has three similar windows on the right, but only the door of the balcony on the left. The balcony has a solid bronze railing in Lous XV style. The archway in front of the building, composed of five arches on Doric columns, is continuous with the adjacent Palacio de Lombillo. On the façade looking to the Mercaderes street, you will see a mailbox, built into the wall, in the form of an ornamental stone-mask of Greek tragedy. The slit of the mouth serves to put the mail inside of the mailbox.  It remained from the time when the building served as post office, even though for a short time in 1903. Nowadays it is still intact, and you can read the inscription on it: "Correspondencia interior y peninsular".