Carlos III commissioned Juan de Villanueva to design this building for it to be used as a “block of shops” to be rented to traders during the Royal Visits.
The building has a rectangular floor plan, parallel to the Doctors’ House, or Casa de los Doctores, and solves the problem of the different street level with respect to the neighbouring square, called at that time de la Verdura and currently Plaza de Jacinto Benavente.
The wall giving on to calle Reina Victoria has a front porch with twenty columns which lead on to a covered gallery. The doors are placed between the columns and alternate between vaulted and lintelled spaces which harmoniously follow each other.
At the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century, the whole began to lose its primitive original formal structure, as the number of dwellings increased, increasing the height of the structure and incorporating elements of the era such as windowed balconies.