The Vazquez de Molina Palace, also known as the Palace of the Chains is a renaissance palace in Úbeda (Jaén). It is considered to be one of the best examples of the Renaissance architecture in Spain.
The palace was built by Juan Vazquez de Molina, nephew of Francisco de los Cobos, and secretary of State for Philip II. The project was given to Andrés de Vandelvira who built it between 1546 and 1565.
After the death of the owner the palace became a convent of Dominican nuns, and was remodeled to accommodate the religious community. The mural paintings in the former chapter house can still be seen.
In 1837, after the Ecclesiastical Confiscations of Mendizábal, the building became the City hall.
The palace was designed as a quadrilateral with a two-storey courtyard. The façade has three storeys and is divided into seven vertical sections of different widths.
Architectural features of the main facade include the central portal, the triangular pediments that cap the windows of the main floor, the oval bull's-eye windows (porthole) and caryatids of the second floor, the projecting cornice and the lanterns placed at the corners of the roof.
References:The Pilgrimage Church of Wies (Wieskirche) is an oval rococo church, designed in the late 1740s by Dominikus Zimmermann. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the municipality of Steingaden.
The sanctuary of Wies is a pilgrimage church extraordinarily well-preserved in the beautiful setting of an Alpine valley, and is a perfect masterpiece of Rococo art and creative genius, as well as an exceptional testimony to a civilization that has disappeared.
The hamlet of Wies, in 1738, is said to have been the setting of a miracle in which tears were seen on a simple wooden figure of Christ mounted on a column that was no longer venerated by the Premonstratensian monks of the Abbey. A wooden chapel constructed in the fields housed the miraculous statue for some time. However, pilgrims from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and even Italy became so numerous that the Abbot of the Premonstratensians of Steingaden decided to construct a splendid sanctuary.