Built between 1540 and 1550, this building stands on the major and busiest thoroughfare of the city in the 16^th century, la rúa Mayor de San Pedro, along which the Way to Santiago runs.

It was commissioned by Diego de San Cristóbal, an active tradesman and businessman who held a number of positions in the Town Hall in Estella. This house is the birthplace of his son, Diego de San Cristóbal Cruzat (1524-1578), known as fray Diego de Estella, a member of the Franciscan order, a preacher in the court of King Philip II and a renowned ascetic writer; he was the author of the Treatise on the Vanity of the World and Commentaries on the Gospel According to Luke, the latter of which led to him being tried by the Inquisition.

The palace itself, a jewel of the Renaissance, presents a main façade with a stone base and an upper section of brick, where the most notable feature is its decoration, based on an elegant array of grotesques and human figures, among them infants, intertwined with vegetable and heraldic elements, like the ones that adorn the main entrance and the two balconies of the main living quarters, the piano nobile. Of particular note on the left-hand balcony is the frieze in which we follow the story of four of the twelve labours of Hercules, the fabled half-god of the humanist elite and emblem of the House of Austria, who all renaissance men were eager to emulate as a means of achieving immortality through virtue.

The interior reveals a rectangular patio, an essential part of any self-respecting renaissance home, on two levels, with columns on just three of its four galleries. The fourth is closed off by a brick wall that spans the two floors, with four windows whose frames are richly decorated with skulls, wreaths, masks and cherubs.

Today it acts as the town’s Culture Centre.