Quinta Verde

La Quinta Verde, in Santa Cruz de La Palma, La Palma Island (Canary Islands, Spain) is home to the Quinta Roja in Garachico.  It is the most representative in the Canary architectural fifth suburban; the aristocratic class built a field near the village as a temporary place of rest and recreation.

La Quinta Verde is a fascinating example of suburban homes near the village concept, which is not only important to the building, but also their natural environment, geology and vegetation.
The area is included among the 146 houses in the chronological summary of the most important houses in domestic architecture.  This is as well as having the most interesting examples of Canarian houses in the countryside, as the professor Fernando Gabriel Martin Rodriguez notes in his “Domestic Architecture Canaria” (1978).

To its unique architectural values, landscape and environment we have to also add their historical, cultural and literary aspects.  It is a meeting-place for the Masonic lodge on the island, and was the home of poets like Nicolas Massieu Salgado (1720-1791) and Queen Pestana Leocricia Fierro (1854-1926).
The property has its origin in a home and winery located in a vineyard with fig and fruit trees.  In the second half of the sixteenth century, Alvaro Gonzalez and his wife, Cecilia Gonzalez owned it.  Subsequently, in 1672 the farm became the property of Captain D. Dalle and Nicolas Van Rantz Massieu, a perpetual alderman of La Palma.
The property, which includes the upper palm, introduced terraced configuration, consisting of various staggered gardens.  With steps, stone doorways and pathways to suit the topography of the land, the admirable gardens have a natural order.

The first covered battlement of Quinta Verde, which is the entrance to the farm, is the second largest in the island of La Palma.  The most striking example on the Canary Islands, emblazoned with the coat of Monteverde and Massieu Van Dalle Ponte is in Tazacorte in the house that belonged to the same owners who built the Fifth Green, D. Dalle and Nicolas Massieu Van Rantz and Ms. Angela Ponte Monteverde and Molina.

The cover of the Fifth Framework Verde presents black stone milling and finishing on top of four battlements.  Above the door is a plate, made with Seville tiles, of the family arms of Massieu and Van Dalle Monteverde Ponte, preserved today in the society “The Cosmological.

After passing this first cover, the access road leads to a large stone staircase consisting of twenty-eight steps.  From here the ridge continues, attached to the second home, which is built in red stone and topped with three battlements.  From this point the walk continues in a straight line to reach the ground in front of the mansion.
The building was constructed between 1672 and 1690, and is divided into two distinct clusters separated by an intermediate court.  The buildings are the Noble House, or House of Lords, where the main hall and chapel are located, and another is the Tea and Tile house. The stewards live with the winery, or the winery and the pigeon, according to the partition made in 1706 between the heirs of D. Dalle and Nicolas Massieu Van Rantz.

The area of the Noble House, the House of Lords, is distinguished by the presence of religion and is richly decorated. The gateway, in a small red changeover to the courtyard, has a covered porch skillfully supported by woven sidewalls and four pads.  At right, a door connects to the chapel, or oratory, built in 1679-1680.

The main hall has a roof of four skirts, painted and decorated with Mudejar in almizate curbs.  Each of the polygons has stars painted on its interior with a winged angelic head. The strained and central quadrants of the corners have to rely on the uniqueness of brackets in the form of monstrous masks. Other elements of the house date from the last quarter of the seventeenth century, such as the seats of upright stone at the window of the room overlooking the ravine.
This place was popularized in the archipelago with the song entitled “A Group Taburiente the Fifth Green”.