Inside Palacio De Memoria, the Grand House of Roxas Boulevard

Kuvaus

Roxas Boulevard, then called Dewey Boulevard, was Manila’s Pre-War Millionaire’s Row. Here, classical revival houses and Mediterranean-style mansions owned by prominent families like the Zobels lined a Manila Bay without land reclamation.

The Battle of Manila levelled most of these homes; the rest were victims of progress, and the only one left was a grand, old house.

Welcome to Palacio de Memoria.

The mansion was finally revealed in March when its current owners, the Lhuillier family, unveiled it as a fully restored home for their unrivalled collection of antiques, and as a showroom for Casa de Memoria auctions.

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The ground floor of the Palacio serves as a space for the Lhuilliers’ mostly European collections in themed rooms. There is the Parisian Room, with its dove gray walls and a selection of gilded 19th century French and Italian furniture. Looking over the entire vignette is a photogravure portrait of Queen Amelie D’Orleans, the last queen of Portugal. “She was the ‘It Girl’ of the 19th and early 20th centuries,” says Casa de Memoria’s research specialist Gregorio Caliguia. [...]