Museo de Pontevedra

This construction was built in the 18th century and it was once chosen to keep the Museum’s collection. It is located in front of the A Leña Square, at number 12 on Pasantería Street, and it was bought from Casimiro Gómez Cobas on May 1928. This house, built in 1760, was named after José de Castro Monteagudo, the first auditor of the Province of Pontevedra, who used to live there.

In the past, it not only served as a residence and a museum, but it also was the local premise La Imperial, the restaurant La Flor and the carpentry workshop Rarrá. The first floor used to house a one-room school for children and the current garden used to be a pig stable.

Alfonso Daniel Rodríguez Castelao, artist and funding trustee, was directly involved in the restoration of the building, as is shown in the letters he used to exchange with Francisco Javier Sánchez Cantón, the assistant director of the Museo del Prado. Juan Argenti Navajas, the architect in charge of the project, took into account most of Castelao’s suggestions.

Some of the most remarkable changes that the building underwent during its restoration were the creation of a small garden courtyard, decorated with a balustrade owned by the counts of San Román's palace; the stone bridge, built in 1943 to connect it with the new headquarters, the pazo (Galician manor house) that belonged to the García Flórez family; the complete refurbishment of the ground floor in 1951 by Robustiano Fernández Cochón; and the tower built in 1955.

At present, it is closed for refurbishment.

It is the oldest of the six buildings that make up the Museum of Pontevedra and consists of the remains of the old church and Dominic convent, founded around 1282. The only elements preserved, dating from 1383, are the chevet of the church, with five apses, exceptional in the Galician Gothic style; part of the church’s wall; and the entrance to the chapter house.

The convent closed its doors on 8 December 1836 due to the ecclesiastical confiscation of Mendizábal and it was handed over to the convent confiscation board Junta de Enajenación de Edificios y Efectos de los Conventos Suprimidos. The board gave the building over to the City Council, who turned it into a retirement home. Throughout the 19th century, it also served as women’s prison, hospice, headquarters of the Civil Guard and nursery school.

In 1846, due to the poor state of the building, the local authorities partly demolished it and used its stones for other urbanistic purposes, such as paving streets. The Town Council attempted new demolitions between 1880 and 1886, but they were stopped by José Casal y Lois and the Provincial Commission of Monuments, with the support of the people from Pontevedra.

Once it had been saved from total demolition, it was given over to the Archaeological Society of Pontevedra, which turned it into a Museum.

The Ruins of San Domingos were declared National Monument on 14 August, 1895. It was the first Galician monument to be recognised together with the collegiate church Santa María a Real do Sar, in the town of Santiago de Compostela.

The Archaeological Society of Pontevedra disappeared when Castro Sampedro y Folgar passed away, on 8 April 1937.  The Ruins of San Domingos and its elements joined the Museum of Pontevedra’s collection, thus becoming the second headquarters of the institution after the Castro Monteagudo Building.

At present, the Ruins of San Domingos preserve and display archaeological and sculptural remains of the Dominic convent, an interesting sample of funerary sculpture made up of noble and guild tombstones, and a heraldic collection.

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It is a pazo (Galician manor house) from the 18th century built by Antonio García Estévez Fariña and his wife Tomasa Suárez Flórez on a previous, smaller one.

The main facade of this urban manor house consists of a portico with three arches resting on columns, featuring the coat of arms of the family. On the side facing Pasantería Street, we can see a staggered distribution of holes that follow the steps of the stairs.

When the Museum acquired the building, the first and two floors were rented to the City Council and the ground floor to Paz Vidal’s widow, as a warehouse for her funeral home. From 1881 to 1930, it had also served as the headquarters of the Women’s Normal School. During the beginning of the 30s, the Graded School for Children was located on the first floor and its director lived on the second one.

The building underwent minimal external reforms so it would be part of the Museum’s building complex: among other things, the plaster was taken off and a bridge was built, by turning a window into a door, to connect it to the first headquarters of the Museum. Two sculptures—Esperanza (hope) and Fortaleza (strength)—, which came from the palace of the counts of San Román and were preserved by the Archaeological Society of Pontevedra, rest on top of each corner of the main façade.

Inside the building, the division and distribution of the first and second floors were also modified to adapt the space to the exhibition needs; these reforms were inaugurated on 15 August 1943. Three years later, in 1946, the ground floor was renovated to exhibit architectural elements and a replica of the officer’s mess room of the Spanish ironclad Numancia.

At present, it is closed for refurbishment.

It is a new construction that was built for museum purposes. It is partly made up of historic buildings from the 18th century: the numbers 10 and 8 on Pasantería Street, bought together with a lot adjoined to the latter. The construction work started on 7 April 1962 and it was possible thanks to the economic contribution of the businessman and philanthropist José Fernández López. The building was named after him, by unanimous agreement of the Board of Trustees.

The final project was approved on 25 April 1962 and its construction was not completed until late 1965.

The new construction, made of stone masonry, has a ground floor, a first and a second floor and an arcade on quadrangular pillars on part of its main façade, which faces the Castro Monteagudo Building and displays the coat of arms of the town of Pontevedra. In 1972, it was remodelled with the addition of arches on engaged columns from the pazo of the marquises of Leis de Campolongo.

The house at number 8 was treated differently to preserve its original façade facing Pasantería Street. Thanks to this, nowadays we can see an inscription dating 1714 on the first-floor balcony. In 1976, the criterion for incorporating the house at number 6 was the same, although it changed slightly in the 90s after purchasing the houses 4 and 2. Celestino García Brañas and Javier Reboredo, architects and authors of the latest addition that was inaugurated on 2 May 2003, which combined tradition and modernity, respected the original façades but incorporated new constructions and materials in the garden area, where the glassed structures and the copper walls particularly stand out.

Today, the Fernández López Building is the Museum’s administrative department and houses its archive, library, and research room.

It is a baroque-style construction built from 1658 to 1714 under the direction of the Galician architect Pedro de Monteagudo. The Sarmiento Building and the San Bartolomeu Church were built at the same time, being the former the headquarters of the Jesuit School.

Inside, it is worth mentioning the two-storey cloister and the stone staircase that connects the ground floor, made of strong and beautiful arches on the east side, to the first and second floors, built in 1722 under the direction of the architect Isidoro López. The part of the building that faces Padre Amoedo Street was added later on and was built with masonry of lower quality.

After expelling the Jesuits, the school served as the headquarters of different institutions, such as the schools of Primeras Letras and the Latin school Latinidad (sponsored by the Town Council), the Lees brothers’ textile factory, warehouses, or the first high school of the town of Pontevedra. From 1903 to 1974, it served as the Hospice and the founding hospital Inclusa, which were unified in 1955 under the name Hogar Provincial (Provincial Nursing Home).

In 1978, the Ministry of the Interior allowed the transfer of the building to the Museum of Pontevedra, and the rehabilitation work started in 1979, based on the projects by the architects Ricardo Aguilar Argenti and Rafael Fontoira Surís. On September 1981, an exhibition of Goya’s engravings was hosted in the cloister, but the official opening to the public would not be until 11 August 1984. The current design of the building corresponds to a refurbishment dating 2008, designed by Eduardo Pesquera and Jesús Ulargui and inaugurated on 21 August 2013.

Its permanent exhibitions include archaeological collections from the Prehistory and Antiquity, the Sargadelos and Pontecesures pottery, other emblematic national pieces of pottery (Manises, Paterna, Seville, Toledo and Talavera), and the exhibition of the Sánchez Mesas-Fernández de Tejada legacy of contemporary Spanish art and East Asian art.

Out of the six buildings that made up the Museum of Pontevedra, the Castelao Building is the only new construction and it was planned as a museum from the start. It is located behind the San Bartolomeu Church and the Sarmiento Building, which used to be the headquarters of the Jesuit School. It was built on the grounds of a previous construction from the 20th century, an enlargement of the Hogar Provincial (Provincial Nursing Home).

The Council of Pontevedra (Deputación de Pontevedra) organised a contest to select the most appropriate construction project, which was awarded to architects Eduardo Pesquera and Jesús Ulargui. The construction work started in 2004 and ended in 2007. It was officially opened to the public on 4 January 2013.

The building takes up 10,000 square meters and its six floors are dedicated to permanent and temporary exhibitions, assembly and restoration workshops, storage rooms, a coffee area, an auditorium, and several areas for different purposes.

This construction has two structures: the glass one, which joins the Castelao and the Sarmiento buildings with a glass walkaway; and the stone one, which houses the exhibition rooms.

The Museum’s permanent collection, which displays Galician artworks dating from the Late Middle Ages to present times together with pieces from other regions of Spain, is shown in twenty-three exhibition rooms. The building was named after the Galician writer and artist Alfonso Daniel Rodríguez Castelao and some of his most remarkable work can be found here. The Museum also keeps pieces by renowned artists, such as Maruja Mallo, Joaquín Sorolla, Ramón Casas or Fernando Álvarez de Sotomayor.

The last building incorporated into the Museum of Pontevedra has been the Santa Clara Convent. It is made up of a group of buildings and outdoor spaces, covering an area of more than 12,000 m², in the town centre. It comprises a church, a convent, a garden, an orchard and other small buildings.

Founded in 1271, it had been home to Poor Clare nuns until December 2021, when it was purchased by the Town Council of Pontevedra. Later on, in January 2023, the property was transferred to the Deputación de Pontevedra and was then incorporated into the museum. The building itself had been the stuff of legends and mysteries, for being a place of religious seclusion. Now the citizens have the opportunity to discover this place by participating in the guided tours of the property and in the activities organised by the museum and the Town Council in the church.

Santa Clara Convent has changed over time. Some of its most outstanding architectural elements date back to the Middle Ages, such as the distinctive Gothic apse of the church, from 1362. During the 16th and 18th centuries, it was repeatedly altered and enlarged to give it the appearance it has today, although it has also undergone more recent renovations.

In the exterior of the church, particularly noteworthy are the Gothic-style pointed arches in the chevet, the representation of the last judgement in the archivolts of the entrance door, the baskets featuring animal and human figures, and the series of coats of arms of families that were linked to the convent. Inside, the main altarpiece, in the churrigueresque style, the tombs with human sculptures on both sides, the high and low choirs and the baroque pipe organ stand out.

The convent features a porter's lodge, the only place where nuns could interact with the outside world through a small window, and the cloister, which used to have three sides, of which only two have been preserved. Other outstanding spaces are the parlours, the cells, the chapter house, the cellar and the old refectory.

The Deputación de Pontevedra carried out an archaeological, historical and artistic study to delve into the history of the convent. Accordingly, the provincial institution has just launched an international call for proposals to select the best projects for restoring the entire property. Besides the new uses that may be defined as part of the museum, the convent's orchard and gardens will be open to the public and the church will be used as an events hall.