Casa Grande de Cornide

About

The Casa Grande de Cornide is a paradigmatic example of popular Galician architecture of agrarian functionality. A stone masonry construction, it is built with 90-meter thick walls. The house has a hipped roof and two stories over a 28-meter wide by 10-meter deep rectangular base, as well as a large attic. Construction began in the mid-18th century and annexed sections, such as the pigeon loft, were added over time. The pigeon loft is 6 meters in diameter and has a capacity for 400 pigeon nests. Other annexes include the raised granaries and the sheds. In the late 19th century the house was enlarged, undoubtedly thanks to the successful American emigration of its owners - the Tarrio family - who had set up business as booksellers in the Argentine city of Rosario. With this enlargement, the construction took on a certain style of the "indianos" (Spaniards who made their fortune in the Americas), and it became known as the "Casa do Americano". In 1936, Manuel Tarrio, who kept his bookstore open in Rosario but spent long periods in Calo where he was a member of the Republican Left, had to go into exile and definitively return to Argentina, where he died without offspring. The house remained closed for forty years until, in 1976, it was bought and rehabilitated by its current owners as a family home. In 1992, they decided to turn it into what was one of the pioneering boutique hotels in Galicia.