Town hall and jail of Calaceite

The town hall (casa consistorial) of Calaceite is a building constructed in the early 17th century, between 1609 and 1612, and was the work of stonemason Pedro Pizarro. This Renaissance building serves several functions and has a number of distinctive features.

On the ground floor, it houses a "lonja" (porticoed hall) and a jail, a testament to the history of justice in the region. The vestibule, on the ground floor, contains an exhibition space with various interesting historical elements, such as a Gothic keystone from the old parish church, a relief dating from the second half of the 15th century and the old Gothic cross transferred from the plaza Nueva.

The first floor is the main floor (piano nobile) and contains the Plenary Chamber. In this chamber there is an oratory built in 1613, a recently restored altar and a wooden crucifix of the Santo Cristo, to which the townspeople would turn in procession to pray for rain. The building also preserves an important archive containing parchments and other documents dating back to the 13th century.

Finally, the second floor opens onto the typical gallery with round arches characteristic of the civil architecture of the area.

The town hall building of Calaceite houses on its first floor what were once jails feared by the local inhabitants. Today, this space has been fitted out to serve as a small exhibition paying tribute to the history of incarceration in the region. Information panels have been installed to explain how the authorities operated in that period and to detail the stories of those who were imprisoned there.

From the early modern period, in Aragon, villages had the right to legislate and administer justice across a wide range of matters — criminal, civil, political and economic, both public and private — through their local statutes. These municipal laws often held a higher hierarchical rank even than regional laws, and could be amended, waived or contradicted. In that context, jails were places where sanctions were applied and where those who had broken local laws were detained. Today, this former jail forms part of the Ruta de las Cárceles del Mezquín-Matarraña and can be visited as part of the guided tours offered by the Tourist Office of Calaceite.