Convento de Santa Paula, Seville

Convento de Santa Paula is a living cloistered monastery in Seville, home to nuns of the Order of Saint Jerome and dedicated to Paula of Rome. Its church presents a remarkable entrance, completed in 1504, where brickwork, pointed arches, sculpted ornament and glazed ceramic details bring together Mudéjar, Gothic and early Renaissance elements. Pedro Millán created it with help from the Italian-born ceramic artist Francisco Niculoso Pisano.

Look at the church doorway and its layered decoration; this is the most distinctive architectural feature visible from the street. Inside, the church was built from 1483 to 1489 as a single-nave structure. Its ceiling includes a richly patterned Gothic rib vault in the sanctuary and a Mudéjar wooden roof made by Diego López de Arenas in 1623.

The main altarpiece, made by José Fernando de Medinilla in 1730, carries a sculpture of Santa Paula. The walls also preserve a tiled dado dated 1616. The convent’s enclosure contains two cloisters, including a principal courtyard made by Diego López Bueno in the seventeenth century.

A museum was opened here at the end of the twentieth century, and it is the only museum installed within a Seville cloister. The slender belfry remains a striking feature above the complex.