Hospital de Sant Pau: The Administration Pavilion

Why is it significant?

Cross to the gates and take in the building facing you: a long palace of red brick with a clock tower, its walls dressed in stone, mosaics, coloured tiles and sculpted angels. It hardly looks like a hospital. That was exactly the idea.

Key Facts

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Cross to the gates and take in the building facing you: a long palace of red brick with a clock tower, its walls dressed in stone, mosaics, coloured tiles and sculpted angels. It hardly looks like a hospital. That was exactly the idea.

This is the Administration Pavilion of the Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau, and its double name holds two stories. The Santa Creu, the Holy Cross, was Barcelona's great medieval hospital, founded in 1401 in the Raval. By the nineteenth century it was hopelessly overcrowded and unhealthy. And yes, it was in that old hospital that Gaudí died in 1926, while the new one was rising here, at the other end of his avenue.

The Sant Pau comes from a banker, Pau Gil, who made his fortune in Paris and died in 1896. He left a large part of it to build a modern hospital in Barcelona, on one condition: that it carry the name of his patron saint, Saint Paul. The commission went to Lluís Domènech i Montaner, and construction began in 1902.

Look at the façade carefully. The mosaics tell the history of the hospital, from its founding to Pau Gil's will, and the sculpture and tilework come from the same team of craftsmen Domènech gathered for his other masterpiece, the Palau de la Música Catalana. The two buildings were inscribed together on UNESCO's World Heritage list in 1997.

The money ran out long before the dream did. Pau Gil's bequest paid for only part of the plan, and the works dragged on. Domènech died in 1923, and his son, Pere Domènech i Roura, completed the hospital, which was finished in 1930. Now go through the main entrance and into the grounds behind this building, where the real surprise of Sant Pau begins.