Villabuena de Álava

Villabuena de Álava (Basque: Eskuernaga) is a municipality located in the province of Álava, in the Basque Country (Basque Autonomous Community) of northern Spain. It is famous for its production of top quality wines. The village has 48 wineries ranging from small family-owned businesses to larger bulk-production wineries. The centre of the village contains one of the oldest and most decorated churches in the Basque region, the Church of Santa María de Villanueva. Nearby is Hotel Viura, a boutique hotel.

Villabuena features long, parallel streets, which follow the contours of the river valley, where the parish church stands. One of the outstanding aspects of the municipality are the many renaissance houses, patrician houses, and small palaces adorned with coats of arms, built between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries.

The Palace of Peciña Samaniego is known as "The House of the Indian". It was built by Andrés de Bença, between 1608 and 1610, for Pedro Peciña Samaniego, archdeacon and canon of Santiago de Compostela. The palace was built on a rectangular plan with a ground floor, an apartment above, and a tower that is accessed through a semicircular arch. The tower features two more semicircular arches, forming a gallery. A relief decorates the key of the arch. Some of the original Carlists of the region, like Francisco de Paula Rivas, stayed in the apartment.

Construction of the Marqués de la Solana began in the sixteenth century and continued in the eighteenth century, with the addition of two wings. This resulted in a house with two facades: the older one facing Santiago Street and the second one facing the High Street.

Along Villabuena Street, there are many houses that have carved, decorative elements, such as coats of arms, which identify the original owners. One house has a quartered shield with a bear being attacked by a dog next to a tree, a castle with three towers, and a farmhand holding a horn, with a forest and a wild boar hunting scene in the background.

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Wikipedia