“La Casa de las Cabezas” is a beautiful house from the Middle Ages with four courtyards and the “Callejón de los Arquillos”. It shows how a noble family lived in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. According to tradition it was a palace of Almanzor where Gonzalo Gustioz, the father of the seven Infantes de Lara, was imprisoned.
Flanked by the depth of its narrow alley of Muslim origin, the House not only offers us one of the most emblematic corners of Cordoba, but immerses us in an atmosphere in which history and legend are woven; and it moves us to that Spain wounded by contradictions, in which, despite leaving the Middle Ages, the Mudejar style continued to impregnate patios and rooms.
Indeed, the airs of modernity introduced by the Renaissance in the sixteenth century, fail to displace the Cordovan tradition, whose reminiscences still endure and encourage the historical imagination. The continuation of the Andalusian culture is evident; the ladies are still sitting “a la morisca”, on the floor, on rich stands; the knights, separated from the previous ones, are still warriors, whose main mission in life was to fight with courage, before against the Moors, later in distant countries and, even, in the Indies.
But aside from its architectural values, this residence of the Middle Ages is full of history and aromas of legend, as it was a fortress of Almanzor -others say of his sister Fatima-, which served as prison for the unfortunate Gonzalo Gustioz, father of the Seven Infantes de Lara, its rooms being the stage where the most tragic events of that old Cantar de Gesta Castilian took place. In some of its corners, Mr. de Salas contemplated the severed heads of his children, presented on a silver platter. The tradition also says that, as trophies, the heads were exposed in the alley, hanging one by arch, hence this narrow way up to now conserve seven arches, and this is the name with which, sometimes, it is known.