The first question that draws attention is that Mr. de los Cobos, a great promoter of artistic modernity and little suspicious of feudalizing romanticism, chose, in Canena, to build a palace with a castle structure. It should be remembered that great patrons of the Italian Renaissance commissioned castles from consecrated architects in civil works such as San Gallo, San Michele, or that Leonardo da Vinci himself was requested by the King of France for the design of military fortifications. But perhaps the cause that prompted Mr. de los Cobos to entrust Vandelvira with the design of this peculiar emblem was to take as a reference that the most significant building in the town was a castle, located in the middle of the town, and thus connect with the constitutive tradition of Canena although presenting it from an artistic lexicography consistent with his artistic and humanist ideals. Indeed Canena, which owes its name to its occupation, at the beginning of the 13th century, by the Syrian tribe of the Banu Kinana, whose chiefs built a fortress in the place that had previously been cast in stone by the Romans, had a new castle built towards 1477, without royal permission, and with the consequent complaints of Baeza before the king, by Sancho de Benavides. Francisco de los Cobos could not be insensitive to the vicissitudes of his new possession and of his dialectical relations with Baeza and decided to create a mansion in which solidly fortified structures with artistic and aesthetic refinements were combined, especially in its interior. Its plan, almost square, is bounded by two large towers that protect the angles on its main façade and two others, smaller, apparently incomplete, on the opposite side, all of them circular. The tribute tower stands out, this one with a square plan, which Eslava, without much foundation, considers a previous construction, corresponding to the castle of Benavides. Despite the compact appearance, the constructive sobriety, the unequivocally military tectonic order and the polyorcetic hierarchy, dominating the urban complex, the building offers in its exterior profile some connotations of proportion, harmony and balance that show the authorship of a builder and artist as rigorously Renaissance as Vandelvira. The façade has a somewhat archaic structure not without charm: it opens with a raised semicircular arch flanking Corinthian pilasters on plinths, with an arched entablature, a frieze with grottos and a cornice on which another semicircular arch that welcomes, stands, on its tympanum, the shields of Don Francisco de los Cobos and Doña María de Mendoza, topped with a helmet and crest and, at their sides, fantastic figures of tenants with the lower half of their bodies transfigured into a wing and vegetation. Externally, it is finished off by three flameros and the grooves to raise the old drawbridge are preserved, higher still. Windows with convent style wrought iron bars are scattered on the façade. The patio, one of the most characteristically Renaissance elements, has a cloister staircase and five semicircular arches on each side, to emphasize the symmetry at the cost of giving it a somewhat variegated character. In the lower gallery, the arches are Ionic, with the capitals arranged across, intrados with rosettes, corbels in the clefs and medallions with mediorreliefs of human faces in the spandrels. The upper gallery, also Ionic, repeats the lintelled structure, with the peculiarity of large footings on the columns that rest on plinths decorated with military motifs, and is bordered by a baluster railing.The castle was declared a National Monument in 1931, in the second In the middle of the 20th century, it was bought by an Englishman and, in 1986, by an executive of a Spanish-Arab bank who has carried out a worthy conservation and maintenance work, thanks to which it is not in a dilapidated state like other castles in the province.