Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Hospital de Sant Pau

I'd read about this place a bit in the books....and I'd thought about going, but I'd never been...until this week.

WOW!

The hospital de Sant Pau is amazing, it was all designed by Lluís Domènech i Montaner and has been declared a UNESCO world heritage site...richly deserved.

Sadly (well for me that day, not in general) it is undergoing a GIGANTIC renovation.....GIGANTIC, so very few buildings were open.  Despite that, it was spectacular.

Well, first I had to go by this place....you may recognize it...or not.


And I got up to the Hospital.  As you can see, if you look carefully, it is currently closed, the main entrance that is....


so I walked up one side of the building, peeping over the wall....



Peering through gates....


and came in through the parking lot at the back and found myself in this construction zone.


took some photos while I was there


and got down to an area with a few more tourists.


and a few more buildings.  The hospital was designed to be a series of buildings, for different purposes, all of them connected underground by tunnels.



The place is frankly astonishing, and will be even more incredible when we can get into see some more of it!



I stuck my nose into one of the tunnels, this one is pretty darned practical.


back above ground....

this building is actually open and part of the Universitat Autonoma, and if I'm going to go back and take some pictures, cause it was pretty mind blowing.

Weirdly there were a bunch of American students hanging around...not sure why.


Not sure who was thinking what when they designed that balustrade (is that the right word?)


Water tower or bell tower?????


A little modern day work outside the hospital...


there are a LOT of buildings...it is amazing.




after that we went to visit the marcat dels encants, in their brand new building.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

And all that without getting caught by security... :). I suspect the balustrade workers would need a little chat with Sigmund :D.
You *do* have to go back and take more pictures. (Also, at a time when shadows will stretch from those balustrade patterns. It'll be even better. Or worse?)

oreneta said...

SO true with the more photos...some of it was legit, some of it, kinda sorta, there are university students around, which always opens doors, even if you aren't really supposed to be there, it's hard to tell the students from the tourists...