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Villa Carmen, in Santa Eugènia de Berga, in the region of Osona, is the same as the house in Alfred Hitchcock’s film Psycho. It is from cinema, from horror, but it has a very particular architectural and artistic appeal, as can be seen in this report in Las Fotos de los Lectores de La Vanguardia.
According to the Cultural Heritage Map of the Barcelona Provincial Council, this tower is an evolution of the old Mas Gener, also known as the Palau or Villa Carmen.
El Gener is a farmhouse already documented since the 12th century with the name Gener de Palou because it is located within the old rural town of Palou, although the house is also called Palau because the Bishop of Vic (the farmhouse had been owned by the bishopric) came to spend the summer and spend a few seasons in this house.
Attached to the Gener de Palou farmhouse, Villa Carmen dates back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, by the Carbó family, who acquired the estate in 1837.
One of the last residents in the house was Mercedes Carbó, who in the 60s of the last century, curiously, became famous because she won the then popular television contest One million for the best.
Villa Carmen is not only popular because it looks like something out of a horror movie, but also because of its artistic value that makes it so peculiar and rare, since it is one of the few samples of the French academic architectural style that we find in Catalonia.
We can focus, for example, on the work with wrought iron, stone or glass in the historicist manner, as well as the large staircases to access the noble area of ??the building.
As detailed by the Santa Eugènia de Berga City Council, which bought the building in 1997, the former owners of Villa Carmen surrounded the tower with a large fence, with a garden and an artificial lake.
The Gener de Palou tower is “a delight for lovers of historical architecture and a unique opportunity to see first-hand an example of the French academic style in Catalonia”, the consistory remarks.
