One
of the few civil buildings reminding Plaza de Bolívar colonial surroundings,
since it still preserves original vestiges, when lodging stores in the first
floor and dancing and bedrooms in the second floor. The house has a heavy
typical Spanish style wooden door, an alley which floor was decorated with
cattle spine bones. Although exact construction date is unknown, we know Genealogies of the New Kingdom of Granada were written in that house by writer and historian Don Juan Flórez de Ocáriz, house owner in 1654. His daughter Juana María and her husband, General Antonio Nariño’s defender, descendants inhabited the house, and then the house became property of Policarpa López Durán de Durán general José Hilario López daughter up to 1923 when her heirs sold it.
When restoring the house in 1979, mural colonial painting samples were found and preserved in the main room together with commercial signs painted in distemper announcing the tailor’s shop opened there until late in the XIX century.
The house was named “of the Comuneros” to honor the memory of 1782 revolutionary gest, that is why in 1981 the District Government in view of bi-centenary, destined the house known as property of Don Juan Flórez de Ocáriz, to open a Home-Museum. After restoration in 1999 the republican house known as Comuneros II and a lovely English style building known as English House, current District Culture and Tourism Home were integrated.
