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Convent of Sant Bartomeu de Bellpuig

Bellpuig, Urgell, Lleida

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Convent of Sant Bartomeu de Bellpuig

Monument · Bellpuig, Urgell, Lleida

A Franciscan convent founded in 1507 at the wish of Ramon Folc de Cardona, baron of Bellpuig and viceroy of Sicily, on the site of a hermitage of Sant Bartomeu documented in 1326; the conventual church was already finished in 1591. The building, transitional between late Gothic and the Renaissance, is arranged around two cloisters: one Gothic, of two storeys with pointed arches, and the so-called cistern courtyard, with galleries of helicoidal columns by Joan Llopis (1533-1535), whose capitals show plant, animal and human figure motifs, and a third gallery in the Tuscan order added in 1614. It was burned in 1808 during the Peninsular War (Guerra del Francés) and occupied by French soldiers in 1809; it fell into ruin after the 1835 disentailment and was rebuilt in 1897, until in 1899 the Vincentian fathers moved in and built a new church; it was rebuilt again in 1941 after the looting of the Civil War. Today it houses the Museu d'Història de Catalunya.

Photo: Manel Zaera (CC BY-SA 2.0)

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