The Palacio del Infantado or Palace of the Dukes of Infantado is an Elizabethan Gothic style palace with Renaissance elements. It was ordered to be built by Íñigo López de Mendoza y Luna, second Duke of Infantado, at the end of the 15th century.
The Infantado Palace is located in the same place as the "main houses" of Pedro González, the first Mendoza Alcarreño. Around 1480 the second Duke of the Infantado, Íñigo López de Mendoza y Luna, demolished the old family houses and decided to build a new palace "to enhance the glory of his and his parents." In 1483 the façade was completed, shortly after the courtyard and at the end of the century the palace was already complete in its basic structure. At the end of the 15th century, the monument shone in all its Gothic splendor, coffered ceilings and wealth. The traces are attributed to Juan Guas, an architect from Toledo.
In 1560 Felipe II married Isabel de Valois in this palace.
In 1569 the fifth Duke of Infantado began a series of reforms directed by Acacio de Orejón that tended to equate the palace with the residence that King Felipe II was building in the vicinity of Madrid. He tried to achieve this by putting certain Renaissance details on the façade (he opened new windows, covered the old ones, removed the Gothic pinnacles), in the courtyard, whose level was raised, and decorating the ceilings of the low rooms with fresco paintings by Italian artists who they were working in El Escorial, like Rómulo Cincinato. The "mythological garden" was also built next to the palace.
In 1738, Mariana de Neoburgo, widow of Carlos II, was authorized to return to Spain from her exile in Bayonne and she settled in this palace, where she died shortly after, in 1740.
It was also the scene of the meeting of Felipe V with Isabel de Farnesio on the occasion of her wedding by proxy.
At the end of the 19th century, Mariano Téllez-Girón y Beaufort Spontin, 15th Duke of Infantado, made a sale / transfer of half the palace to the City Council. Later, the Ducal House and the City Council gave it to the Ministry of War, which used it as a school for military orphans.
In 1936 the palace was bombed and destroyed. After the war, the transfer to the Ministry of War ended, and the owners of the palace, that is, the eighteenth Duke of Infantado and the Guadalajara City Council, transferred the property to the Provincial Council in 1961 to carry out a large museum project. This transfer included, as consideration for the duke, the reservation of an area for housing and family archives, which would generate problems decades later. Reconstruction and rehabilitation began, although its former splendor was lost forever as were the Mudejar coffered ceilings, some of the best in the world.
In 1972, the Guadalajara Provincial Historical Archive and the Guadalajara Provincial Public Library were moved to the building.
In 2004 the library was moved to the Palacio de Dávalos.
The Historical Archive will be moved throughout 2013 to another recently built building and the vacant space will be given new uses.