Old Hospital

The building was composed of two infirmaries with a cross floor plan, two floors and an octagonal dome in the center, following a model that had emerged in northern Italy and that allowed patients to be separated according to their sex and diseases, while all the rooms could be controlled from the central space. The hospital in Valencia is the first in Spain to follow this practical scheme.

From its first phase, prior to the great fire of 1545, only the doorway that today remains exempt in front of the entrance, but the immediate reconstruction respected the same plan, following the traces of Gaspar Gregory. Today only one of the two infirmaries remains standing, since the other was demolished in 1974 and there are hardly any loose pieces of it left in the adjoining gardens.

In what is now the Provincial Public Library we can see how the Renaissance style was applied for the first time not only to decorative forms, but also to architectural structures, so that the arms of the cross look like basilicas with naves separated by thick columns, and the central space, where mass was officiated in times for the inmates, It has the shape of an octagonal temple covered by a large dome.