University of Osuna functioned from 1548 until 1824. The building of the former university is significant both architecturally and for its long history as a seat of the university. Its construction was ordered by Don Juan Téllez Girón, founder of the university. The First Duke of Osuna was responsible for numerous buildings in his domain, nearly all of a religious character. The university building is, therefore, particularly notable as an essentially civil building devoted to education.
The buildings erected under the patronage of the First Duke of Osuna are important primarily because of the adoption and diffusion of new stylistic currents and ideas from the Italian architecture of the time. The Renaissance aspects of the buildings are patent, as is the relation to the ideology of humanism in a building expressly created as a center for modern education.
The surviving university building testifies to the Renaissance aesthetics, providing one of the most singular and defining architectural examples of Osuna's past greatness.
References:House of the Blackheads (Melngalvju nams) is a building situated in the old town of Riga. The original building was erected during the first third of the 14th century for the Brotherhood of Blackheads, a guild for unmarried German merchants in Riga. Major works were done in the years 1580 and 1886, adding most of the ornaments.
The structure was bombed to a ruin by the Germans June 28, 1941 and the remains demolished by the Soviets in 1948. The current reconstruction was erected from 1995 to 1999. Today the House of Blackheads serves as a museum and sometimes concert hall.