Plaza de Alfonso XII, Tortosa

Torotosa, like any Catalan city, is teeming with buildings from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, where you can see a variety of architectural styles and trends. Early in the morning, I went along the local "modern route".

The development of the period 1890-1930 was carried out mainly aroundAlfonso XII square (Plaza de Alfonso XII on the map), when the area became the bourgeois center of Tortosa. The middle building on the North side of the square attracts attention for its decor - The house of Ballester (Ballester Casa on the map). The house was built in the art Nouveau style in 1911, owned by the family of olive magnate Ballister. The building on the right was added in 1931 by order of the same Ballester, already without architectural excesses. This is a typical representative of the purely Catalan trend of "novesentism", which was popular from 1911 to 1931. Its adherents contrasted the" decadent and anarchic chaos "of modernity with" order, clarity, harmony, rationality and moderation."

The decoration of the opposite side of the square is undoubtedly the building of The former sabaté clinic (Sabaté Clinic on the map), built by the architect Josep Maria Wacker in 1914-1915 in the style of late art Nouveau-historicism. The building is given original features of the decor, made on ancient Egyptian motives. In 1916, a clinic was opened here, owned by doctors-the Sabate brothers, who were interested in Eastern history and culture. The building now houses the Bank of Madrid.

The portal was designed by the sculptor Arnaldo PI

In front of the clinic building, you can see the sculpture "Mother and son" Inocencio Soriano Montaguta, established in 1958.

Then I head East along the Carrer de Ramon Berenguer IV to Cervantes street, just a block from the square.