House of the Giant (Former mansion of the Counts of Menocal)

It is called this because in the corridor on the upper floor of the building there is a large figure of a soldier sculpted in mortar and painted in polychrome. Its meaning and why it was placed there are unknown, but it is certain that the person who built such a mansion was a person of taste and good humour enough to decorate his house with a useless but artistic figure.

The beautiful and stately design of elegant Corinthian style in the rest of its architecture, as well as its state of conservation, make this one of the most beautiful colonial jewels of the city.

According to researcher Gabriel Silva Mandujano, in his book: The Baroque House of Pátzcuaro, the aforementioned house was built at the beginning of the 18th century by Don Antonio de Cabrera, a councilor of the City Council and one of the main merchants of the city.

The building, owned by private individuals, is located at Portal de Matamoros or Portal Chaparro, in Plaza Vasco de Quiroga; it is also known as the Mansion of the Counts of Menocal.

The sculpture of the Roman soldier, “whose face with long moustache and haircut, denotes the fashion of the 17th century, and whose gaze is directed to the left, towards the staircase, as if intimidating the newcomer,” says Silva Mandujano.

The famous German geographer Alexander von Humboldt, considered co-founder of geography as an empirical science, stayed at this estate during an exploratory trip he made to what is now known as Mexico in the early years of the 19th century. While in Pátzcuaro, he visited the El Jorullo volcano in the municipality of La Huacana.

His voyages of exploration, comparable to those of Darwin in terms of the influence they had in various scientific fields, took him from Europe to South and North America to Central Asia, conducting experiments and field studies in numerous areas, such as physics, zoology, climatology, oceanography, geology, botany, among others.

“For me, nature is not just an objective phenomenon, but a mirror of the human spirit.”, wrote the German scientist.