Palacio Piria, Ensenada, Italian-style palace in Punta Lara, Argentina.

Palacio Piria is an early 20th-century Italian-style palace on Camino Costanero Almirante Brown in Punta Lara. Its light stone-like facade has a curved upper portico on four tall plain columns, a stone balustrade along the wings, a roof balustrade and flagpole, and a wide dark opening below the central balcony. About 40 columns remain; much of the interior has collapsed.

Luis Castells y Sivilla, who had bought an estate at Punta Lara for livestock and thoroughbred breeding, planned the palace from 1890 as a riverside setting for summer society; he died in 1897 before it was built. His only son, Luis Castells Uriburu, finished it between 1907 and 1910, and it opened for the centenary of the May Revolution. Francisco Piria bought it in 1925 and lived there until the early 1930s.

The name honours Francisco Piria, the Uruguayan businessman and alchemist who bought the palace in 1925 and lined the first-floor rooms with wood carved by Uruguayan artists. In the Salón de los Espejos, the central room hung with beveled mirrors, he replaced the fittings with hand-worked bronze. He lived here until the early 1930s, when bureaucratic obstacles ended his plan for a resort.

The palace is not open to the public and stands in deteriorated condition due to decades of vacancy. Local groups occasionally organize tours, so it is worth inquiring beforehand about any possible visits.

The property once covered 4,887 hectares, most of it later urbanised. Francisco Piria bought the palace in 1925 hoping to turn the area into a resort and even linked it to the La Plata railway, but bureaucratic obstacles defeated the plan and he returned to Uruguay. His story was filmed in the 2014 Argentine feature Ciudadano Piria.