El Capricho is a villa in Comillas, designed by Antoni Gaudí. It was built in 1883-85 for the summer use of a wealthy client, Máximo Díaz de Quijano. Unfortunately the client died a year before the house was completed.
Gaudí, who designed only a small number of buildings outside Catalonia, was involved with other projects at Comillas. He was the assistant of Joan Martorell on another summer residence, the palacio de Sobrellano.
El Capricho belongs to the architect's orientalist period, during the beginnings of Gaudi's artwork. El Capricho allows to see all the foundations on which modernism is based, anticipating Europe's avant-garde modernism. The tower has been compared to a minaret. After the dead of Máximo Díaz de Quijano, this building was used such as a summer house for the most economically and politically powerful people.
References:The Château du Lude is one of the many great châteaux of the Loire Valley in France. Le Lude is the most northerly château of the Loire Valley and one of the last important historic castles in France, still inhabited by the same family for the last 260 years. The château is testimony to four centuries of French architecture, as a stronghold transformed into an elegant house during the Renaissance and the 18th century. The monument is located in the valley of Le Loir. Its gardens have evolved throughout the centuries.