Monastery of San Bernardo

Foundation of Cardinal don Bernardo Sandoval y Rojas

Its construction required the total transformation of the Almanxara quarter, where the Moorish artisans had settled, in addition to occupying part of the Palacio del Arzobispado (Archbishop’s Palace).

Its church is a magnificent example of Mannerist architecture, the author of which is the architect Juan Gómez de Mora, who had the collaboration of the master builder of the Complutense Sebastián de la Plaza. The façade is of the curtain type and is made of brick, whose reddish tones form a beautiful chromatic contrast with the stone of the covers, shields, impost with the foundational inscription and the statue of San Bernardo with bronze crosier.

Where the greatness and originality of the temple is discovered is in its interior. Both the floor plan and the dome are elliptical, with four chapels, also elliptical, alternating with three rectangular ones, one of which is the largest. The altarpiece-baldachino is of exempt type, of the so-called ones of four “faces”, all of it made in painted, stewed and polychrome wood, design of the brother Bautista, with good paintings on board of the Italian Angelo Nardi, painter of the court. All the chapels are also decorated with paintings by Nardi, who painted the whole ensemble between 1616 and 1620. The monastery has a baroque cloister in brick and a good monastic staircase.

Text in Spanish: Vicente Sanchez Moltó. Alcalá World Heritage Guide.