Visitors to Madrid who tour the phantom tube station at Chamberí will find some artistic items of heraldic interest. As the guide explains, when the station was first opened in 1919 the firms who sponsored its construction were rewarded with space for permanent advertisements on the walls adjoining the platforms. In the remainder of the…
Just found these pictures I took last year when a friend of mine married at Madrid City Hall’s principal venue for such ceremonies, the ancient Casa de la Panadería in a square much loved by locals and tourists alike, Plaza Mayor. Perhaps surprisingly, only the Spanish arms – not Madrid’s municipal coat – figure as…
A valuable and, I believe, still little-known resource for Spanish heraldry and genealogy online are the manuscripts digitised through the Spanish National Library’s ‘Biblioteca Digital Hispánica’ subsite, the number of which has grown steadily over the past couple of years. This site offers a veritable treasure trove of Spanish heraldic and genealogical manuscripts of diverse…
This town in Spain’s westerly Extremadura region was the venue for a wedding I recently attended and while there I found some very appealing heraldic display, ranging from these beautifully painted 16th century arms in one of the chapels at the Nuestra Señora de la Granada church, to these more modern painted tiles at the…
I have just added 15 entirely new pages to my armorial.es site, and updated the pages of 4 cities with photos of additional coats of arms. Acabo de actualizar mi sitio armorial.es, añadiendo 15 páginas enteramente nuevas, y fotos adicionales para 4 ciudades más.
Whilst in London last week I visited the City’s historic church of St Botolph without Aldgate and admired its unique memorial to Robert Dow, Master of the Merchant Taylors in 1578 and a generous philanthropist. The only images of this memorial that I was able to find online focused – understandably – on the man…
Upon downloading a copy of Granville Leveson Gower’s Genealogy of the Family of Gresham from Google Books, I was pleased to spot this heraldic bookplate on the inside of the front cover. It was the bookplate of Cecil Foljambe, subsequently the 1st Earl of Liverpool of the 1905 creation. The book was published in 1883,…
Or so it would seem if disheartening heraldic snippets in the Spanish press are any indication. The onetime home of the Marqués de Campo Villar, in the Bécares area of the Spanish province of León, has for decades lain in ruins; indeed the area seems to have become depopulated in the 19th century. Yet the…
It seems ironic that as official disinterest – disdain, even – for family arms rules the day in many places, local and national arms in contrast receive a great deal of attention from the powers that be, and do so despite the financial crisis affecting most countries with heraldic traditions. The latest news in this…
With Spanish unemployment hitting 25% – as much as 50% among those under 24 – and public officials under pressure to set an example of austerity, clearly there’s never been a better time to spend public funds fiddling with a centuries-old heraldic device. The authorities of the ancient Castilian town of Carrión de los Condes…