Art
A house that was gathered, not decorated
Villa Paula wasn’t decorated in an afternoon. It was furnished over centuries, and you can tell because almost nothing matches and everything makes sense.
Two hundred and forty
A library of Spanish art beside the fireplace
Two hundred and forty books given over to showing images: painting, ceramics, architecture, craft. Everything that can be called art tied to Valencia and to Spain, gathered in one place and next to the fire.
Reading isn’t only looking at words. A book of images is read differently: opened anywhere, put down, come back to. It’s reading for a January afternoon with the fire lit.
And in the travel room there’s another shelf, with books to get lost in Japan, New York or Singapore.
On the walls
Oils, engravings and canvases
In the shared rooms and in each of the seven bedrooms. Naming the technique says what needs saying: these aren’t reproductions.
In the sitting rooms
The work is where life happens, not in a display room. You have dinner in front of it and children run underneath it.
One per bedroom
Every room has its own name, colour and paintings. The Mediterranean, the white one, the flower room, the naval one, the travel room, the bullfighting room and the children’s.
The ceramics
Five centuries of pieces, restored. And the cobalt-and-white chequer on the façade, which is the face of the house and the origin of everything else.
Here, pieces are restored, not replaced. That’s the difference between a house that was decorated and one that was gathered. We tell you what’s here when you arrive.
A craft that is running out
The hand that painted two rooms
There was once a whole trade in Valencia devoted to painting fans by hand. Very few people are left who can do it.
Two pieces in the house came from that hand: the triptych mirror in the white room and the painting above the bed in the flower room. Two different rooms joined by the same painter, and once you know it you don’t look at them the same way again.
18th century
The billiard table gets used
It’s over two hundred years old and in use. There’s no rope, no sign and no warning: people play on it. A house where the antique furniture can’t be touched is a museum with beds, and this isn’t that.
If the group wants, we’ll tell it
What’s on the walls has its story, and it isn’t written down anywhere: it’s told walking through the house, piece by piece, taking as long as it takes.
It isn’t a timetabled tour or a learned script. If the group is interested, you say so and it happens.
R.S.V.P.
What to ask for in advance
None of this is compulsory and none of it has a form. You tell us on WhatsApp and it’s sorted before you arrive.
The books, the ceramics, the work on the walls and the billiard table don’t need asking for: they’re there from the moment the door opens.