The Casa Orduña is a building that dates from the 17th century, since it was built after the great earthquake of 1644. It is a traditional noble house located between the Parish Church and the Alcozaiba Castle. The house is situated on an irregular piece of land. On one side, it leans on and surmounts the crag and on the other side it even takes up spaces over the chapels of the adjoining church. The building is supported by masonry lead-bearing walls. Wood, plaster and ceramic floor tiles are also used in the building. It has four levels and a “cambra” (chamber) which you can enter from several stairs. The ground floor consisted in a huge entrance room, a cellar, a kitchen, a dining room, larders, stockyards, stables and barns. The other levels were used as different bedrooms and rooms.
The Casa Orduña was erected by the Orduña family, a Basque lineage that arrived to Guadalest as trustworthy people of the Marquises of Guadalest. The Orduñas worked for the marquises as keepers of the fortress and people governing their states.

Among the rooms of the house, we can find the Sala de Entrada (Entrance Room), decorated with religious oil paintings, and the Sala de los Arcos (Room of the Arches), in which works from the annual painting contest held in Guadalest are exhibited. We also find:
The Anteroom, in which you can contemplate an Ecce-Homo by an unknown author representing a double figure of Christ.
The Sala de la Virgen (Room of the Virgin), where there is a display case containing the reclining processional figure representing the "Dormición de Nuestra Señora (Virgen de la Asunción)" (Our Lady Falling Asleep, the Assumption Virgin). We also can admire a 210 x 188 cm painting placed on the main wall of the room, which reproduces the end of the earthly life of the Virgin Mary as it is related in the Apocrypha. This piece is ascribed to the Maestro de Alcira and can be chronologically classed between 1527 and 1550. Another importrant element in this room is the "Custodia" (the Monstrance), which dates from the 18th century.

The Kitchen.

The Dining Room, where an excellent collection of ceramics is exhibited.
The Salas Nobles (Noble Rooms), the layout, furniture and fittings of which show how the private life some centuries ago was conceived.

The Library, with a total of 1,265 volumes.

The Exhibition Hall, where sculptures and paintings by different artists are periodically exhibited and finally, the Fourth Floor, with a room for many different uses.

NUESTRA SEÑORA DE LA ASUNCIÓN

PARISH CHURCH

12th-century building located on the ground floor of the Town Hall.

Calle de la Virgen, 2 

From Monday to Sunday:

Winter: from 10 to 18 hours.

Summer: from 10 to 21 hours.

In the Antonio Marco Museum, proportions are still unbalanced.

Miniature enthusiasts have a meeting point in this museum. In this centre, we can admire models in many different shapes and with different contents. Thus, we can find from architectural works to doll's houses in the Nativity Scene Museum, where visitors can enjoy charming doll's houses 60 and 70 cm high decorated with furniture made out of real materials and also built with real construction materials, of course scaled-down models.

Among the miniatures we find for example:

• The Statue of Liberty inside the eye of a needle.
• The Maja Desnuda by Goya painted on the wing of a fly.
• An elephant modelled on the eyes of a mosquito.
• The Guernica by Picasso painted on a seed.
• A camel walking through the eye of a needle.
• The Fusilamientos by Goya painted on a grain of rice.

This museum contains two art collections: miniatures that can be seen through powerful magnifying glasses and giant sculptures.

Among the miniatures, the most important are:

• A bullring built on the head of a pin.
• The Bible made in a hair section.
• A flea riding a bike along the edge of a seed.
• The Guadalest portal and bell tower made in a quarter of a centimetre.
• An ant playing the violin.
• The Kremlin in miniature.
• A village built on a bone two centimetres long.

The Ethnological Museum of Guadalest is located inside a typical house of the 18th century. In it, we can see how people lived in days gone by and know about their customs and traditions. It has a stockyard, a kitchen as those used before and rustic tools that you will not find nowadays.

The contents of the museum are divided into two parts:

a) Everyday domestic life: You can see the larder, a real reproduction of the hearth, an oven to bake bread, the stockyard with animals, different tools for farm work and the bedroom with that period furniture and clothes.

b) The farm production: the process of production of the oil by means of an oil press and machines, tools and instruments. We will also see the reproduction of a press and the tools for the growing of the vine. And finally, a scale model of a cereal mill in operation and tools for the growing and the threshing.

Another curiosity is the exhibition of 200 handcrafted firearms you can find inside.

C/ Honda, 2

This museum shows torture instruments.

The King Jaime II donated the Guadalest Castle as a fief to Bernardo de Sarria in 1293 and then a period of 42 years started, during which the castle and the whole region ended up belonging to the Sarria family.

In 1335, the Castle passed to the Crown. The Crown sold it to the Infantryman D. Pedro and after it passed to his son, the first Duke of Gandia and when the last Royal Duke of Gandia died, to the Cardona family. The Cardona family became Admirals of Aragon and in 1543, the King and Queen Carlos y Juana granted D. Sancho de Cardona and his successors indefinitely the title of Marquises of Guadalest.

The last Cardona who was Marquis of Guadalest died without issue in 1699 and this caused a series of problems that finished when the marquisate went to the Marquis of Ariza. The Marquisate continued and its power declined in the 19th century. .

During the Cardona period, there is another family that achieved great importance: the Orduña family. The links of the Orduña family with Guadalest date from the 16th century. They were perpetual keepers since 1669 and reached nobility in 1756, when Pedro Antonio Buenaventura de Orduña y Garcia joined the Order of Santiago.

In the 19th century, the Orduña family gained power and influence in the Navy and even in Alicante and in 1934 the last Orduña member, Carlos Torres de Orduña, died without issue and his belongings passed to his collateral relatives.

While these two families went down in Guadalest history, other singular facts changed the appearance of the town.

On June 22nd 1644, an earthquake destroyed the Castle and in December of the same year, another intense earthquake took place.

In 1748 and in 1752, more earthquakes took place, but this time less intense than the previous ones. During the Spanish Succession War, in 1708, the San Jose Castle was blown up and its west wing was seriously damaged, and the Casa Orduña was burnt down.

In the 20th century, Guadalest underwent a series of important changes. In 1953, the reservoir started to be built and was finished in 1971. Tourists started to find out the charm of the Castell de Guadalest. In 1974, Guadalest was declared Historical-Artistic Ensemble. The Walled Precinct was subject to the Decree for Generic Protection of Spanish Castles dated on April 22nd 1949. In 1980, Guadalest received the Tourist Merit Bronze Plaque and in 1981, the third Tourism National Prize to the Beautification and Improvement of the Spanish towns. In 1994, the municipal purchase of the Casa Orduña was agreed and it was renovated and converted into the Municipal Museum.