Palacio del Marqués de Mirabel, Renaissance palace in Plasencia, Spain

The Palacio del Marqués de Mirabel is a 15th-century civil building in Plasencia, the most important of its kind in the city. Its Renaissance courtyard has two levels of semicircular arches carved with the arms of the Zúñiga-Mirabel house, and a plateresque balcony at the rear is the only one of its kind in Plasencia.

Construction began in the 15th century on the initiative of Álvaro de Zúñiga y Guzmán and his second wife Leonor Pimentel y Zúñiga, first dukes of Plasencia. The building was declared a bien de interés cultural in 1977.

The palace holds a collection of Roman-era Italian archaeological pieces and tiles from the Monastery of Yuste. The Salón de Carlos V contains a bust of Emperor Charles V by the Italian sculptor Pompeo Leoni. The hanging garden facing Plaza de San Nicolás is decorated with Roman columns and sculptures from Cáparra and Mérida.

The palace is only open to visitors as part of a guided tour, and it sits in central Plasencia within easy walking distance of the old town. It is worth checking in advance which days tours are available, as they are not offered every day.

The hanging garden connecting the palace to the church of Santo Domingo holds Roman columns and stone sculptures gathered from the ancient sites of Cáparra and Mérida. These pieces were treated not just as decoration but as genuine archaeological objects worth collecting and preserving.