Laredo Palace is a mixture of architectural, sculptural and decorative archetypes and elements, inspired by different styles but dominated by the neo-Mudejar style. The building is a set of rooms, towers and viewpoints, porches, terraces and gardens.Visitors will find rooms inspired by the Alhambra (plasterwork, tiles, coffering), by Pompeian frescos (paintings and painted fabrics) and by the Plateresque tradition, and with Modernist, Gothic, Renaissance, Nasrid and Moorish decorative motifs in general.
Laredo includes pieces from other monuments in other places, including coffering and small vaults from the Palace of the Condes de Tendilla; vaults and columns from the Castle of Santorcaz; Spanish-Moorish tiles form the Palace of Peter I in Jaén; and columns from the Monte Loranca Jesuit Penitentiary, amongst others.
It is currently a museum dedicated to Cardinal Cisneros, and contains a documentation centre and a specialised library which includes documentary and bibliographic sources relating to the history of the University of Alcalá.
References:Saint-Georges de Boscherville Abbey is a former Benedictine abbey. It was founded in about 1113 by Guillaume de Tancarville on the site of an earlier establishment of secular canons and settled by monks from the Abbey of Saint-Evroul. The abbey church made of Caumont stone was erected from 1113 to 1140. The Norman builders aimed to have very well-lit naves and they did this by means of tall, large windows, initially made possible by a wooden ceiling, which prevented uplift, although this was replaced by a Gothic vault in the 13th century. The chapter room was built after the abbey church and dates from the last quarter of the 12th century.
The arrival of the Maurist monks in 1659, after the disasters of the Wars of Religion, helped to get the abbey back on a firmer spiritual, architectural and economic footing. They erected a large monastic building one wing of which fitted tightly around the chapter house (which was otherwise left as it was).