Eixample

The Hospital de Sant Pau in Barcelona, with its mosaic of gardens and pavilions, is a complex of great architectural beauty and functionality: the pinnacle of the Catalan modernista style. The light, open-plan hospital, which is located in the Eixample, has little in common with the hospitals that existed in cities when it was built.

By the end of the 19th century, the old Hospital de Sant Pau in Barcelona’s Raval neighbourhood, had become obsolete and too small. It needed to be relocated. The result was an innovative modernista project directed by Lluís Domènech i Montaner, which took 30 years to build, from 1901 to 1930. The Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau was a modern, spacious facility, consisting of separate pavilions surrounded by gardens and streets. A small modernista town which took into account the patients’ quality of life.

The pavilions were surrounded by streets and green areas to walk in. An underground tunnel connected the wards and other facilities, making it easier to move casualty patients around the complex. The brick building at the main entrance with its clock tower, is the hospital reception. It is here, and in the ten pavilions surrounding it, where Domènech i Montaner and his associates, who included the modernista sculptors Pau Gargallo and Eusebi Arnau, proved their talents in the execution of sculptures and mosaics. The remaining buildings were completed by Lluís Domènech i Montaner’s son, Pere Domènech.

The Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau was declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco in 1997.