The year is 1598, king Philip II of Spain has died and his son has taken his spot as king becoming Philip III the Pious. Unlike his father, Philip was notoriously weak-willed and kind of a slob, except when it came to chasing tail or hunting, his two main occupations. The affairs of the kingdom were managed by his privado or valido Francisco Gómez de Sandoval y Rojas, known as the Duke of Lerma, who would go down in History as "the biggest thief in Spain" for his obscene and blatant corruption (por no morir ahorcado, el mayor ladrón de España se vistió de colorado¹, but that is a story for another time). Being then amongst the highest ranking nobles in the land, he started working on a project to turn his village of Lerma (province of Burgos) into something befitting a man of his high dignity: a truly ducal village.

The village of Lerma was rahter small, and definitely not grandiose enough, so Francisco de Sandoval y Rojas worked hand in hand with the best architects and urbanists in order to turn the old castle and the main square into a palatial compound with a palace, a gallery, and a number of monasteries and churches, because pious works are always welcome and good for publicity.

In the year 1601, the duke received the royal family in his fiefdom of Lerma, but the lodgings were quite unfit for such a distinguished and numerous company as the royal household, and that is why he started his programme, for which he contacted Francisco de Mora, the Royal Architect. This is what Luis Cabrera de Córdoba, a chronicler and diarist of the time tells us:

What is said the monarchs do now in Lerma is to listen to comedies, for which they have made Ríos and his company come thither [...]

The Duke of Lerma has called for Francisco de Mora, the architect, for the the construction of the houses he wants to be beuilt there, in the street called Calle de la Sangre, for the Duke's servants and his close people, want them made, each their own, as the Gentlemen of the Chamber have started to do in Ventosilla, for they don't have a place where to be lodged when the king would be there, but half a league or even a league away

Important thing to mind is that "houses" was used as synonym for palace in the parlance of the time, as one can see from other informations about the "houses of the duke of Infantado in Guadalajara" or the "houses of the Constable of Castile" in Burgos.

Francisco de Mora started working as soon as possible on the blueprints of the palace that would be raised in Lerma. These blueprints are preserved in the Archivo Histórico Provincial in the city of Valladolid, and are dated in 1602. Money not being a problem, Mora hired the most skilled people he knew of, and who were people of great fame: master stonemason Pedro Pedrosa, neighbour of Villacastín, and for the decorations and fine stones he hired Jácome Lombardino, and italian master of his craft known for many other projects.

Grandiose projects like this one require a lot of time and a lot of people, and each of the masters involved had their own teams and hired extra people as the situation required it. Furthermore, the project of the Ducal village dragged on for years. In 1611 it was decided that the "houses" would become a full-blown palace, which means having lateral towers decorating it, and so the duke asked the king for his royal permission to have two towers in his houses, which the king granted. This resulted in the Duke having four towers, something reserved to royalty, and that did not sit well with the king. Lerma, of course, argued that he had asked for permission for two towers, meaning two extra towers, as he already had two.

In 1613, with Francisco de Mora having died three years prior, it was time to have a new architect for the new structures that would be added to the palace: the new chambers. These were commissioned to Juan Gómez Mora, nephew of Francisco and a remarkable architect too, and friar Alberto de la Madre de Dios. Four years later, the palace was completed and so were the monasteries, churches and gardens of Lerma.

1- To avoid hanging by the neck, the biggest thief in Spain dressed up all in red.

I know a very good example of this, but it is not quite from the 16th century, as the construction started in 1601. Would that be acceptable? If so, I can write here about the ducal palace of Lerma, which is rather well documented.