MADRID, Spain.- In front of the Plaza Mayor of Trinity, In an old mansion on Cristo Street, whose construction dates from the first half of the 18th century, where Captain Felipe Santiago de Silva lived, unique and highly valuable collections of Cuban decorative arts are exhibited.
The house, which recreates the atmosphere and way of life of the 19th century aristocracy in what is now a heritage city in Spiritus, passed to his son, the priest José Antonio de Silva y Oquendo, when he died in 1807. executors sold it to José Mariano Borrell y Padrón, who had the top floor built.
In 1830 it was inherited by his daughter Ángela Borrell y Lemus, who that year married Nicolás Brunet y Muñoz, who received the titles of Count of Casa Brunet, Viscount of Palmarito, Count San Buenaventura and Gentleman of His Majesty’s Chamber. And they both lived there.
Decades later, the stately home would be used for various purposes ─including store and hotel─, until it was acquired by the Pro Trinidad Association in 1945 and, partially restored, served as its headquarters.
Inaugurated as the Palacio Brunet Romantic Museum on May 26, 1974, its exhibition halls house a wide range of luxurious furniture made in Cuba and Trinidad, crockery, silverware, lingerie and porcelain that belonged to wealthy families, as well as crystals from Europe and other pieces from that stage of romanticism ─an artistic and literary movement that emerged in Europe between the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century and spread to America─. There are also mural paintings on the walls.
A domestic architectural relic of the peculiar city of cobbled streets, the museum was given the rank of a palace for its sumptuousness, in which the facade of large arches on pillars, the marble pavement, the overhanging balcony with decorated iron grille are distinguished.
