the old Municipality of La Orotava It is for sale for 1.8 million euros. It is a historic mansion from the 18th century, in the middle of the the town of La Orotavawhich could be bought for 300 million pesetas, according to the real estate portal Idealistic. This ad refers to the Casa Díaz Flores, also known as Casa Brierwhich was a Jesuit school, the town hall and a hotel, where illustrious people stayed, such as the British painter and biologist Marianne Norththe Spanish soldier and politician Francis Serranowhich gives its name to the popular street in Madrid, or the also British explorer Richard Francis Burtondiscoverer of Lake Tanganyika and the sources of the Nile, in Africa.
The Municipality of La Orotava recalls on its website that «from the beginning of the 18th century the site occupied by this house housed the school of Saint Aloysius Gonzaga, promoted by the order of the Jesuits. After the confiscation, the site acquired other uses, the most notable being the headquarters of the City Council. However, in 1841 a fire reduced the building to ashes, at which time the current building sponsored by Antonio Diaz Flores and Vera. It is one more example of the romantic classicism that was so well received in this Villa. From 1862 and until the beginning of the 20th century it fulfilled the functions of hotel accommodation». In the garden and part of the façade there are interesting carved stone elements that belonged to the defunct Jesuit college.
Idealistic reports that “in its more than three centuries of existence, this building and its plot have been used for various purposes”, and details that, after the serious fire of 1841, “it was rebuilt in the 1850s by Díaz y Vera, who built a new residential building which he named the magnolias». As of 1862 it began to have a hotel use with different names such as Govea pension or Hotel Hesperideswhich was the first large hotel in the historic center of La Orotava.
«At the beginning of the 20th century, the Flores Díaz family decided to sell the property to Joseph Brier, whose descendants have maintained the property until now. The house has been for sale for a few years”, this portal points out in its section dedicated to dream houses.
The house has about 1,900 square meters and is distributed over three floors with a central patio that distributes all the rooms of the house. Outside it has a large garden that maintains stonework elements from the school that the Jesuits built in 1709. The entire plot included in the category of Well of Cultural Interest (BIC) of the historic villero complex and is located at number 1 Calle Colegio, very close to the emblematic Casa de los Balcones and in the middle of the traditional flower carpets and the pilgrimage of San Isidro Labrador.
It also hides part of a church
the art historian Jesus Rodriguez Bravo explained in his book The Jesuits and the arts in La Orotavapublished by LeCanarien in 2015, that in the current Brier house you can still distinguish the walls and the internal structure of the nave of the church that the Jesuits built in “the highest and most colorful part of La Orotava», a temple that was believed «completely destroyed».
