[Illustration: PLATE 19 SALAMANCA MDW 1869 CASA DE LAS CONCHAS] PLATE XIX. _SALAMANCA._ EXTERNAL WINDOW OF THE CASA DE LAS CONCHAS. THE windows of the first-floors of Spanish houses are always the largest, airiest, and openest, of the whole of the windows of the house, excepting in the rare cases where there is a top story consisting of a large gallery, as frequently at Genoa, serving for promenade and look out--in fact a species of Belvedere. The importance of the rooms lighted is generally indicated by the relative richness of the window dressings. The profusion with which heraldic insignia are used in the window sketched, suffices, therefore, to show that with others of the same kind it lighted the principal saloons of the house. Another point of construction illustrated by the sketch, is the fact that the "conchas" or carved stone shells have been applied after the general building of the wall. This is proved by the regularity with which they are placed, irrespective of the heights of the various courses of masonry, and of the levels at which the joints occur. [Illustration: PLATE 20 SALAMANCA CASA MONTEREY. MDW 1869] PLATE XX. _SALAMANCA_. EXTERIOR OF THE CASA MONTEREY. OF the very picturesque specimen of domestic architecture illustrated in Plate XX., and bearing the local name of the Casa de Monterey, but little seems to be known. Escosura confesses himself reduced to conjecture, and thus theorises on the subject. As to the exact epoch at which the Casa de Monterey was built, the following circumstances should be borne in mind. "The title of Conde de Monterey was created in favour of Don Baltasar de Zuñiga, who was Viceroy of Naples in the year 1626. This nobleman caused the Church of the Convent of Nuns which bore his name, and which stands opposite his palace, to be erected at his expense from the designs of the fashionable Italian architect, Fontana. May it be unreasonable to suppose that the Palace was designed at the same time by the same architect?" To this question, the proper answer given by some better judge of architectural style would, probably, be "very," since it is difficult to perceive any similarity between the modes of design, upon which the two buildings are based. The architecture of the Church of the Convent, one angle of which appears on the left hand of the sketch, is in the large florid manner of the post-Palladian Italians, while that of the Palace is small in its ornamental parts, and instead of exhibiting Italian features, seems throughout to show the peculiar reading of Italian style adopted by the late Plateresque Spanish architects of the second half of the sixteenth century. This is particularly noticeable in the absence of a crowning balustrade, and in the substitution for it of the elaborate pierced cresting which apparently the Spanish architects adopted from Moorish rather than from any antique models.