Hospital de las Cinco Llagas: From Hospital to Parliament
Why is it significant?
Take in the length of this pale façade, stretching across the gardens like a palace that forgot where to stop. It was built not for a king but for the sick poor of Seville, and it was named after the five wounds of Christ: the Hospital de las Cinco Llagas.
Key Facts
| Place | Hospital de las Cinco Llagas: From Hospital to Parliament |
|---|---|
| Address | Calle San Juan de Ribera, 41009 Sevilla, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 37.40520, -5.98850 |
| Part of Walk | The Macarena and the Almohad Walls: Seville's Barrio of Faith |
| Generated | Generated |
Take in the length of this pale façade, stretching across the gardens like a palace that forgot where to stop. It was built not for a king but for the sick poor of Seville, and it was named after the five wounds of Christ: the Hospital de las Cinco Llagas.
The idea came from a remarkable woman, Catalina de Ribera, who founded a hospital for women around 1500 inside the city. Her son, Fadrique Enríquez de Ribera, Marquis of Tarifa, left a fortune in his will to give it a building worthy of the name. Work began in 1546, outside the walls, where the air was thought cleaner and contagion further away, and some of the best architects of the age took turns over the following decades, among them Hernán Ruiz the Younger, who also crowned the Giralda with its belfry.
For more than four centuries this was a working hospital. It saw the waves of epidemic that swept the city, including the terrible plague of 1649, which killed tens of thousands of Sevillians in a few months. Wards ran around a sequence of courtyards, and at the centre stood a church, so that the bedridden could hear Mass. The hospital finally closed in 1972, and the building slowly fell into decay.
Then came its strangest reincarnation. After restoration, the Parliament of Andalusia moved in, holding its first session here in 1992. And the debating chamber is the old hospital church itself: regional deputies now argue about budgets and schools beneath a Renaissance vault built for prayers for the dying. Few parliaments anywhere sit in a former chapel.
Remember the family name, Enríquez de Ribera. The same Fadrique who paid for this hospital went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem and came home to build a palace in the old city that Sevillians would call the House of Pilate. Now walk back towards the Macarena arch, and instead of going through it, turn left along the outside of the walls on Calle Muñoz León.