Spanish Colonial architecture

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Colonial Cathedral of Lima, in Peru
Spanish style in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico

Spanish Colonial architecture represents Spanish colonial influence on New World and East Indies cities and towns, and it is still being seen in the architecture as well as in the city planning aspects of conserved present-day cities. These two visible aspects of the city are connected and complementary, the 16th century Laws of the Indies included provisions for the layout of new colonial settlements in the Americas and elsewhere.


The new churches and mission stations, for example, aimed for maximum effect in terms of their imposition and domination of the surrounding buildings or countryside; in order for that to be achievable, they had to be strategically located – at the center of a town square (plaza) or at a higher point in the landscape.

The Spanish Colonial style of architecture dominated in the early Spanish colonies of North and South America, and were also somewhat visible in its other colonies, it is sometimes marked by the contrast between the simple, solid construction demanded by the new environment and the Baroque ornamentation exported from Spain.


The historic center of Mexico City is a mixture of architectural styles from the 16th century to the present, the Metropolitan Cathedral – built from 1563 to 1813 in a variety of styles including the Renaissance, Baroque, and Neo Classical. The rich interior is mostly Baroque. Other examples are the Palacio Nacional, the beautifully restored 18th-century Palacio de Iturbide, the 16th-century Casa de los Azulejos – clad with 18th-century blue-and-white talavera tiles, and many more churches, cathedrals, museums, and palaces of the elite.

During the late 17th century to 1750, one of Mexico's most popular architectural styles was Mexican Churrigueresque, these buildings were built in an ultra-Baroque, fantastically extravagant and visually frenetic style.

Antigua Guatemala in Guatemala is also known for its well preserved Spanish colonial style architecture. The city of Antigua is famous for its well-preserved Spanish Mudéjar-influenced Baroque architecture as well as a number of spectacular ruins of colonial churches dating from the 16th century, it has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.


According to UNESCO, Quito, Ecuador has the largest, best-preserved, and least-altered historic centre (320 hectares) in Latin America, despite several earthquakes, it was the first city that was inscribed onto the UNESCO World Heritage List, along with Kraków, Poland in 1978. The historic district of this city is the sole largest and best preserved area of Spanish Colonial architecture in the world.

History of the city grid in the New World[edit]

The idea of laying out a city in a grid pattern is not unique to the Spanish; in fact, it never started out with the Spanish colonizers. It has been traced back to some ancient civilizations especially the ancient cities of the Aztec and Maya, and also Ancient Greeks.[2] The idea was spread by the Roman conquest of European empires and its ideas were adopted by other civilizations, it was popularized at different paces and in different levels throughout the Renaissance—the French took to building grid-like villages (ville-neuves) and the English, under King Edward I did as well. Some[who?] argue, however, that Spain was not part of this movement to order towns as grids. Despite its clear military advantage, and despite the knowledge of city planning, the New World settlements of the Spanish actually grew amorphously for some three to four decades before they turned to grids and city plans as ways of organizing space; in contrast to the orders given much later on how the city should be laid out, Ferdinand II did not give specific instructions for how to build the new settlements in the Caribbeans. To Nicolas De Ovando, he said the following in 1501:


City planning: a royal ordinance[edit]

Map of the walled city of Intramuros in Manila with elements of colonial planning present.

In 1513 the monarchs wrote out a set of guidelines that ordained the conduct of Spaniards in the New World as well as that of the Indians that they found there, with regards to city planning, these ordinances had details on the preferred location of a new town and its location relative to the sea, mountains and rivers. It also detailed the shape and measurements of the central plaza taking into account the spacing for purposes of trade as well as the spacing for purposes of festivities or even military operations—occasions that involved horse-riding; in addition to specifying the location of the church, the orientation of roads that run into the main plaza as well as the width of the street with respect to climatic conditions, the guidelines also specified the order in which the city must be built.


La Traza[edit]



Modern cities in Latin America have grown, and consequently erased or jumbled the previous standard spatial and social organization of the cityscape. Elites do not always live closer to the city center, and the point-space occupied by individuals is not necessarily determined by their social status, the central plaza, the wide streets and a grid pattern are still common elements in Mexico City and Puebla de Los Angeles. It is not uncommon in modern-founded towns, especially those in remote areas of Latin America, to have retained the "checkerboard layout" even to present day.

Mexico City is a good example of how these ordinances were followed in laying out a city. Previously the capital of the Aztec empire, Tenochtitlan was captured and placed under Spanish rule in 1521, after news of the conquest, the king sent instructions very similar to the aforementioned Ordinance of 1513. In some parts the instructions are almost verbatim to his previous ones, the instructions were meant to direct the conqueror—Hernán Cortés—on how to lay out the city and how to allocate land to the Spaniards. It is pointed out, however, that though the king might have sent many such orders and instructions to other conquistadores, Cortés was perhaps the first one to implement them, he insisted on carrying out the building of a new city where the Indian Empire had stood, and he incorporated features of the old plaza into the new grid. Much was accomplished since he was accompanied by men familiar with the grid system and the royal instructions, the point here is that Cortés accomplished the planning and was on his way to finish the building of Mexico City before the royal ordinances addressed specifically to him even arrived. Men like Cortés and Alonso García Bravo (who is also called "the good geometer"),[citation needed] played a crucial role in creating a city scape of New World cities as we know them.

Church and mission architecture[edit]



Spanish East Indies[edit]

The arrival of the Spaniards in 1571 brought in European colonial architecture to the Philippines. Specifically suited for the hot tropics of the new Far east territory, European architecture was transposed via Acapulco, Mexico into a uniquely Filipino style, the Nipa hut or Bahay Kubo of the Indigenous Filipinos gave way to the Bahay Na Bato (stone house) and other Filipino colonial houses collectively called Bahay Filipino (Filipino houses) and became the typical houses of Filipinos in the past. The Bahay Filipino houses, followed the nipa hut's arrangements such as open ventilation and elevated apartments, the most obvious difference between the two houses would be the materials that was used to build them. It has Spanish and some Chinese influence, its most common appearance is like that of stilt nipa hut that stands on Spanish style stone blocks or bricks as foundation instead of wood or bamboo stilts, usually with solid stone foundations or brick lower walls, and overhanging, wooden upper story/stories with balustrades Ventanillas and capiz shell sliding windows, and a Chinese tiled roof or sometimes Nipa roof which are today being replaced by galvanized roof. Today these houses are more commonly called Ancestral houses, due to most ancestral houses in the Philippines are Bahay na bato.[10]


Bell towers are usually lower and stouter compared to towers in less seismically active regions of the world.[13] Towers have thicker girth in the lower levels, progressively narrowing to the topmost level;[12] in some churches of the Philippines, aside from functioning as watchtowers against pirates, some bell towers are detached from the main church building to avoid damage in case of a falling bell tower due to an earthquake.


See also[edit]

