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The so-called “Casa do Cuadrante” (The house with a sundial), nowadays Valle-Inclán House Museum consists of an area of 468 square meters divided in two floors, and it is built in a plot of 1460 square meters.
In his book “El pasajero” he speaks about his birth in a fantastic way in the poem “Rosa del pecado”
¡El gato que rungla!¡La puerta que cruje!
¡La gotera glo-glo-glo!
¡Solos en casa! A la puerta ruge
La bestia abortada cuando nací yo.
¡La noche de Octubre! Dicen que de luna,
Con un viento recio y saltos de mar:
Bajo sus estrellas se alzó mi fortuna,
Mar y vientos recios me vieron llegar.
The property was part of the lessened real estate of Benedictine priory of Vilanova and later owned by Francisco de la Peña Cardecid and his wife Josefa Montenegro y Saco Bolaño, writer's maternal grandparents.
The house is a traditional Galician stately architecture building: “Pazo” or “big urban house”. Next to the main door we find the coat of arms showing blazons of Peña, Valle and Patriño families. This ornament built in native granite, reveals noble, refined and also popular origin. The house has an “L” shaped plan with two floors; the ground one was place for the stables, stockrooms and wine cellar; the main floor, earmarked as housing, has an independent access from the outside through the “patín” and the “solaina”.
The pazo has been declared “MONUMENTO HISTORICO ARTÍSTICO DE CARÁCTER NACIONAL” - National Historic-Artistic Heritage by Spanish Royal Decree 249/1976 (Official State Gazette of 17 February) as Ramón José Simón Valle Peña’ birth house, subsequently known as Ramón del Valle-Inclán.
After a fire in 1994 that destroyed its inside, it was purchased by the Council of Vilanova de Arousa and restored in order to host the house museum which was opened on May, 2002.
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The museum areas: