Description
The Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau is a former hospital in Barcelona's El Guinardó district, a complex of Art Nouveau pavilions in gardens designed by Lluís Domènech i Montaner. It was built between 1901 and 1930, and UNESCO lists it as a World Heritage Site.
It looks nothing like a hospital. Domènech did not want a hospital-palace. He designed a garden city instead: separate pavilions among trees, with brick, sculptures, glazed ceramics and a patron saint above each door, linked by underground galleries so that patients and staff never had to go outside.
The Administration Pavilion is the grand front, with its clock tower and angels sculpted by Pau Gargallo. The ceramic vaults inside are covered in heraldic tiles, as easy to clean as they were beautiful. Twelve of the pavilions are linked in this way.
The underground galleries tie the whole complex together. Domènech planned 145 square meters per bed, gardens included, when European standards were around 100.
It began with an unusual will. Pau Gil, a banker who got rich in Paris, unmarried and childless, ordered his bank wound up and half the proceeds spent on a hospital in Barcelona, named after Saint Paul. In 1896 the hospital's share came to some four million pesetas.
Barcelona already had a hospital, the Santa Creu, born in 1401 from the merger of six small medieval ones, and its old buildings were worn out. The two joined forces. Work began in 1902. Of the 48 buildings planned, 27 were built, the later ones by Domènech's son.
It worked as a hospital until June 2009, when a new one opened next door. After a restoration costing 100 million euros, the pavilions reopened in 2014 as a cultural center, with workspaces for organizations such as the World Health Organization.
The old medieval hospital buildings near the center of the city still stand, and now hold an art school and the National Library of Catalonia. The restoration of the pavilions, begun in 2009, involved more than thirty teams of experts, who returned the buildings to their original plan and removed later additions.
Don't miss
• The Administration Pavilion.
• The underground galleries.
• The ceramic vaults.
• The gardens between the pavilions.
Did you know?
• The patron's initials, P and G, are hidden all over the decoration.
• Together with the Palau de la Música Catalana, it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997.
• Its historical archive is open to visitors and researchers.
It looks nothing like a hospital. Domènech did not want a hospital-palace. He designed a garden city instead: separate pavilions among trees, with brick, sculptures, glazed ceramics and a patron saint above each door, linked by underground galleries so that patients and staff never had to go outside.
The Administration Pavilion is the grand front, with its clock tower and angels sculpted by Pau Gargallo. The ceramic vaults inside are covered in heraldic tiles, as easy to clean as they were beautiful. Twelve of the pavilions are linked in this way.
The underground galleries tie the whole complex together. Domènech planned 145 square meters per bed, gardens included, when European standards were around 100.
It began with an unusual will. Pau Gil, a banker who got rich in Paris, unmarried and childless, ordered his bank wound up and half the proceeds spent on a hospital in Barcelona, named after Saint Paul. In 1896 the hospital's share came to some four million pesetas.
Barcelona already had a hospital, the Santa Creu, born in 1401 from the merger of six small medieval ones, and its old buildings were worn out. The two joined forces. Work began in 1902. Of the 48 buildings planned, 27 were built, the later ones by Domènech's son.
It worked as a hospital until June 2009, when a new one opened next door. After a restoration costing 100 million euros, the pavilions reopened in 2014 as a cultural center, with workspaces for organizations such as the World Health Organization.
The old medieval hospital buildings near the center of the city still stand, and now hold an art school and the National Library of Catalonia. The restoration of the pavilions, begun in 2009, involved more than thirty teams of experts, who returned the buildings to their original plan and removed later additions.
Don't miss
• The Administration Pavilion.
• The underground galleries.
• The ceramic vaults.
• The gardens between the pavilions.
Did you know?
• The patron's initials, P and G, are hidden all over the decoration.
• Together with the Palau de la Música Catalana, it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997.
• Its historical archive is open to visitors and researchers.