40 
House & Garden 
The PATIO — an ARCHITECTURAL HERITAGE 
The Greek Gave It to the Roman, the Roman to the Arab, the Arab to 
the Spaniard and the Spaniard to Us 
JESUSA ALFAU 
The post office at Ha¬ 
vana, once the San 
Francesco Convent , 
shows the double- 
arched architecture in 
its patio 
Often the patio is 
reached from the street 
by a zaguan or gated 
corridor 
A patio at Vera Cruz, 
Mexico, showing the 
wealth of tropical 
growth 
Edith S. Watson 
The inside stairs is a Latin- 
American innovation. So 
also are the colored panes of 
the fanlights over the door 
to the patio 
of Castile, Aragon and Leon, 
and the kingdoms of Anda¬ 
lusia and Valencia, which were 
the last places dominated by 
them, were filled with great 
and beautiful cities in which 
all of the houses had their 
patios, from the sumptuous 
and splendid ones of the 
wealthy classes to the humble 
and small ones of the poor. 
The classic construction of 
the Spanish houses of those 
times is the peculiar one found 
in all the Spanish cities today 
which have so far been able to 
avoid the great invasion of modern building 
that is extending its ugly uniformity over the 
whole world. This Spanish patio is located 
in the center of the building, and the galleries 
of the house are over it. In many cities of 
Andalusia and in the majority of the cities of 
Spanish America these houses are one story. 
The entrance leads directly to the patio and, 
if the house has more than one floor, the gal¬ 
lery is duplicated in the second story, with a 
row of arches over the patio corresponding to 
the arches and colonnades of the main floor. 
(Continued on page 68) 
T HE most notable of all Spanish character¬ 
istics, as far as architecture is concerned, 
is the patio or courtyard. It constitutes in 
truth the very spirit of the race and nation, 
and wherever the Spaniards went in their con¬ 
quests and colonizations throughout the coun¬ 
tries of the world, they left the patio as the 
most powerful relic of their civilization. 
First, let us recall the Greek courtyard which 
was also an interior patio, located in the cen¬ 
ter of the house. This patio, which originated 
in the Orient, was introduced in Spain by the 
very Greeks that settled on 
the eastern coast of the Medi¬ 
terranean, and it was also 
seen in the Roman houses 
of Pompeii. Later on, the 
Arabs, upon conquering 
Spain, built their Oriental 
patios together with those 
that the Romans had left 
when they dominated the 
Iberic peninsula. It may still 
be seen in numerous Arabic 
buildings that the capitals of 
the columns, in the Mosque 
of Cordoba, for instance, are 
Roman capitals found by the 
Moors in the Roman ruins, 
which still exist in so many 
Spanish cities. 
After the reconquest and 
expulsion of the Moors, all 
