The modernist site of Sant Pau
In recent years, medical research and hospital care have placed Barcelona among the most attractive European capitals as a destination for surgical interventions and medical treatments . The city has numerous medical milestones as remarkable as first heart transplant in Spain, in 1984.
Today we entered the hospital where it was carried out, now without patients, operating rooms or medical activity. The modernist enclosure of the Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau opens its doors to be able to contemplate the ingenuity of its architect, Lluís Domènech i Montaner , at the service of medicine and people. The place where the feat of making someone's heart begin to send blood into another being with the magic of the heartbeat took place, today offers us an impressive walk through the modernism of the city.
The modernist enclosure of the Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau
We will visit rooms, halls and the basement of one of the most beautiful buildings in Barcelona, which was an active hospital for more than eight decades, until 2009. The new Santa Creu i Sant Pau hospital was built on an adjoining site and the old enclosure was rehabilitated to bring its artistic value to the forefront.
Ceramic mosaics and brightly colored stained glass windows and large windows , spaces designed to help improve the well-being of patients and facilitate the work of medical professionals will make us feel inside a small city within Barcelona.
Accompanied by a guide, with an audio guide or on our own -or in the form of a dramatized visit-, inside its walls, we will walk around the outside and inside of the pavilions. We will see the brush of nature in every corner. As was always done in modernism, Domenech i Montaner he took inspiration from her. the light and the sun They are great values in each of the built spaces, and the floral motifs enrich a decoration in which the most present figure and symbol are the angels.
The modernist enclosure of the Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau
ARCHITECTURAL INNOVATION
The hospital complex fits into one of the urban islands that define the Ildefons Cerda's Eixample , neighborhood with which the work delimits. Domenech i Montaner , upon receiving the commission, he began a series of trips to other countries to obtain the best solutions for his new project, which It was built between 1902 and 1930.
Historical mosaics in the modernist area of Sant Pau
low rise canopies , with tile-colored walls and narrative mosaics of historical scenes , were very well oriented so that they took advantage of all the natural light. Among them, garden areas of the hospital resort , contribute to making it a place of calm, rest and recovery, where medicine advanced in techniques and experience.
Hygiene and isolation marked the development of the project , for example, designing patient care spaces in such a way that the location of doors, windows and chimneys of ventilation could generate currents of air to renew the atmosphere of the rooms in a natural way. We will also enter the crossroads of underground corridors -a kilometer of underground galleries- that connect the pavilions to save time and well-being of patients.
Saint Paul
Each pavilion was designed with each type of disease and hospital uses in mind. . There was pharmacy, convent, kitchens, operating rooms, administration … The buildings have two levels and two entrances, one underground and the other at street level. They bear the names of saints (San Salvador, San Rafael, San Manuel, San Francesc, la Puríssima, la Virgen del Carmen, la de la Merced or la de Montserrat). It is a construction in which everything was studied, even the round construction shapes , much more hygienic, avoiding corners or corners that are difficult to clean.
After his spectacular rehabilitation, the enclosure is today a great open book of modernist art. Woody Allen he took advantage of its beauty to locate in it some of the locations of his film Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona.
Sant Pau is today a great open book of modernist art
HIS STORY
The origin of the Sant Pau Hospital was a charity center for sick and poor people inaugurated in 1401 in one of the streets perpendicular to the Ramblas of Barcelona, in full Raval neighborhood . Today that first location is the headquarters of the National Library of Catalonia.
A benefactor made possible the construction of the new hospital -the current modernist site-, when the previous one could not cover the attention that the increase in population required. It was the patron Pau Gil (Barcelona, 1816-Paris, 1896), a banker, son of a rich merchant who died unmarried, leaving written in his will that an important part of his assets were destined for the construction of a hospital in Barcelona to care for the poor. His initials, PG , dot the work was commissioned to Domenech i Montaner.
Sant Pau was born as a charity center
Its 35,000 square meters make it the largest modernist venue in Europe . Thanks to its magnificent restoration, which lasted five years, today we can walk through this work full of history, lessons in architecture and humanism of the city.
In 1997, ten of the buildings that form part of the enclosure received the distinction of the UNESCO as a World Heritage Site . Altogether they got up 27 buildings , of an initial project that had projected to have more than 40. In the attic of one of the current ones is the historical archive of the hospital . There, written documents and photographs are kept that review each stage of the center, as well as the achievements of its most famous doctors.
In the pavilion of Sant Salvador we can visit the permanent exhibition on the history of the hospital. And in the one of Saint Raphael It exposed medical instruments from the collection of the Museu d'Història de la Medicina de Catalunya . Also in this last pavilion we can see the recreation of a room with beds and a room where patients received their visits.
Sant Pau consists of 27 buildings
CONFERENCES, CONCERTS AND FAMILY VISITS
In addition to site visits, some dramatized , are programmed in it musical auditions, and cultural activities and exhibitions . One of the great attractions of the enclosure, especially in the summer sunsets , are their poetry evenings or musical auditions among the gardens and pavilions of the enchanting setting.
The underground tunnels of Sant Pau
In Christmas , as an allegory to the winter solstice and in homage to Domènech i Montaner, although also on special dates (such as this year the March 8 on the occasion of Women's Day ) I know project images with the mapping technique on the main facade of the Hospital. La Llum de Sant Pau is a play of lights and forms that choreograph beauty upon beauty, a spectacle that every passer-by stops to contemplate from the outside.
Another activity that the modernist venue hosts every year is athletic races open to all citizens. The oldest is the one baptized as Scientific career . It is organized by Cardiology Service of the Hospital de Sant Pau , and its objective is to make the population aware of the need to exercise as a complement to a balanced diet in any healthy life plan.
NEW USES OF THE SITE
Currently, in addition to being object of a pleasant visit for those who appreciate art , the Sant Pau modernist site houses the headquarters of institutions and research centers in areas such as sustainability, health and culture. Among them, the Regional Activity Center for Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP / RAC); the European Forest Institute (EFI); the Office for Strengthening Health Systems of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Domènech i Montaner Foundation.
The interiors of Sant Pau are simply magnificent
And what in its day was the surgical area of the emergency department of the hospital , today houses the restaurant 1902 , at the entrance to the venue itself, an invitation to have a coffee on its terrace contemplating the main facade of the old hospital or to enjoy its careful cuisine of Catalan specialties.
GAUDÍ AVENUE
From the main door of the modernist area of Hospital de Sant Pau, a diagonal avenue unfurls like a carpet and ends at sacred Family . Like a small boulevard, pedestrianized in the center and with restricted circulation on its sides, it is about 900 meters long with various sections with shops on both sides.
This is what the 'skyline' looks like in front of Sant Pau
Among some of those worth noting, the Piazza , a restaurant that prepares original pizzas, unlike any other, and tapas of all kinds. Only the name of the place is Italian. It has two stores on the avenue. Facing the greatest of them, we will find Maite's shop , a Barcelonan passionate about design and sustainability. He has filled his place, BdeBarcelona , of charm, only with local design. We will find all kinds of gifts inspired by the city, crafts made in it or in its surroundings.
And if we fancy a breakfast, snack, a coffee or a snack , one of the recommended places to take it is the Forn Puiggros , also with two pleasant stores on the same avenue. Suitcases, household linen, terraces, ice cream parlors, bars give life to a commercial avenue that always watches over the improvement of this street from its grouping Gaudi Shopping , the walk between the two emblematic monuments of the city.
Inside the enclosure of Sant Pau