Monastery of San Miguel de los Reyes

The old Monastery of San Miguel de los Reyes is located in the current Avda. of the Constitution of Valencia. It was founded in the sixteenth century by Ferdinand of Aragon, Duke of Calabria, Viceroy of Valencia. Built over the old Mercedarian abbey of San Bernardo de Rascanya.

It is one of the great works of the Renaissance in Valencia. Although its construction began before that of the Monastery of El Escorial, the stoppage of almost 20 years that followed the death of the Viceroy, meant that it was resumed under a clear influence of the Madrid monument.

The church door is a Renaissance façade-altarpiece, one of the first in the Kingdom of Valencia, guarded by two towers, to which Baroque Solomonic columns were later added. This façade features sculptures of the three Magi.

The temple was built between the years 20 and 40 of the seventeenth century. It is a temple with a Latin cross floor plan, with a single and wide nave, dome on a circular drum and a large high choir at the feet, which almost equals in size that of El Escorial.

Also noteworthy are the cloisters of the monastery, also influenced by the main cloister of El Escorial, which are surrounded by galleries with semicircular arches and stone balusters in the upper area.

This monastery has had multiple uses throughout its history, it was even about to be demolished although the city council managed to avoid it in time. In the mid-nineteenth century it was an asylum, which in 1859 and well into the twentieth century became a prison. Then came a time of sad abandonment.

After its rehabilitation, it is currently the headquarters of the Valencian Library.

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