Museum of Fine Arts San Pío V: Spain's Second Gallery
Why is it significant?
Gaze up at the monumental Baroque facade of golden brick and stone crowned by two stately square corner towers and a vibrant, glazed blue-tiled cupola shining brightly against the clear Mediterranean sky.
Key Facts
| Place | Museum of Fine Arts San Pío V: Spain's Second Gallery |
|---|---|
| Address | Carrer de Sant Pius V, 9, 46010 València, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 39.47930, -0.37100 |
| Part of Walk | Valencia's Turia Riverbed Park and Historic Bridges: From Gothic Stone to Modernist Steel |
| Generated | Generated |
Gaze up at the monumental Baroque facade of golden brick and stone crowned by two stately square corner towers and a vibrant, glazed blue-tiled cupola shining brightly against the clear Mediterranean sky. This magnificent baroque palace began construction in 1683 as the Saint Pius the Fifth Seminary College under Archbishop Juan Tomás de Rocabertí and master architect Juan Bautista Pérez Castiel. After serving as a military academy, cavalry barracks, and charitable hospital throughout the nineteenth century, it was restored and inaugurated in 1946 as the permanent home of the Museum of Fine Arts of Valencia.
Today, this majestic temple of art proudly houses the second-largest and most culturally significant fine painting gallery in all of Spain, surpassed only by the Prado Museum in Madrid. Its galleries showcase over two thousand cataloged masterworks ranging from radiant fourteenth-century gold-ground altarpieces by primitive Valencian painters such as Jacomart and Joan Reixach to timeless canvases by Francisco de Goya, José de Ribera, El Greco, Murillo, and Hieronymus Bosch.
The museum's most prized treasure is the haunting, psychological Self-Portrait of Diego Velázquez, painted around 1650 with loose, modern brushwork and bequeathed to the museum in 1911. Furthermore, the museum dedicates an opulent wing to Joaquín Sorolla, displaying over forty luminous canvases that capture the dazzling sun, fluttering white sails, and golden sands of the Valencian shoreline.
Step inside the central courtyard to admire the reconstructed Renaissance marble cloister of the Palace of Ambassador Vich: sculpted in Genoa in 1527 and brought to Valencia by ship, its exquisite Doric columns were rescued piece by numbered piece before the palace was demolished in 1859 and painstakingly reassembled here in 2007.
Cross the broad, tree-lined avenue directly ahead to enter the fragrant botanical shade and romantic avenues of the Viveros Royal Gardens.