CITAZIONE
The story of the palace begins in 1239 when Jaime I conquers the Bayren territory. From this moment on the territory will become part of the royal heritage of the Kingdome of Aragon. The Muslim population until then scattered in farmhouses was now unified under Christian dominion in various centres of population, among which the town of Gandia. In the year 1323 Gandia became the dominion ruled by Pere de Ribagorça, son of the king James II and reached its height during the formation of the royal duchy of Gandia.
This was the first time that someone who was not the king’s son was appointed duke. Alfonso de Aragón, who was Marquis of Denia, Marquis of Villena, Count of Ribagorça, Duke of Gandia, Constable of Castilla, carried out important ventures in Gandia during his dukedom such as the enlargement of the palace and of the Santa Maria church. Outside the walls of Gandia he built the monastery Sant Jeroni de Cotalba. During this time many artists, writers and poets such as Ausiàs March and Joan Martorell frequented the palace.
Alfonso el Vell died in 1412 and after the short succession of his son, Alfonso el Joven, the duchy of Gandia went back to the royal dynasty in 1425. Later, in 1470, Juan II mortgaged Gandia to the city of Valencia in order to obtain economic resources that could finance the cost of the Catalan civil war. Without its dukes, the town of Gandia and its court slipped into decay coinciding with the exodus of its most important families (The Vic, Vilarig, Marc, Martorell, Roís de Corella, etc.) to Valencia which at that time was living its golden age under the reign of Alfonso V el Magnánimo. The territory of the old duchy of Gandia, fragmented into small seigneurial jurisdictions, was undergoing a process of depopulation and debt that the creation of the new duchy of Gandia was going to recreate.
With the formation of the new duchy in 1485 Gandia knew a long period of splendour. The interest of Rodrigo de Borgia in this little domain was justified: the town had a great history behind which went back to the Catalan-conquest and had a thriving business based on the production and trade of the sugar cane. Rodrigo de Borgia planned thus the future of his heirs by approaching them to the nobility from Valencia and strengthening their ties with the royalty. Pedro Luís de Borgia, Rodrigo de Borgia’s first son, paid 120.000 sueldos to become the first Duke of Gandia. After Pedro Luís’ death in 1488, his stepbrother Juan inherited the duchy. He will marry María Enríquez who initially had been promised to Pedro Luís. Thus, the marriage supposed the union between the Borgia family and the Castilian-Aragonese dynasty. In 1497 the Duke Juan de Borgia was murdered. A new era for the city and the Borgias began with the regency of María Enríquez which ran until 1511. With the complicity of her cousin Ferdinand the Catholic, the Borgias from Gandia strengthened their relationship with the royal court and became more and more independent from their relatives in Rome, even though the connection between the two sides of the Mediterranean kept existing.
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the borgias ITALIA { cortegiania } // il primo forum sui borgia e la renaissance 
rinascimento italiano 
