Convento de Santa Clara

The Convent of Santa Clara dates from 1527, when the nuns of the Order of Saint Clare from Málaga took possession of the recently completed convent. The layout is repeated in the Convent of the Hieronymites in Granada: a church with choir, a cloister attached to the church and around which the essential units of the community are arranged and an annex for outside services around a patio with a portico and a fountain.

The cloister consists of two rectangular floors with brick arches on Mudéjar columns. The façade is in the Isabeline Gothic style, adorned with the coat of arms of the founder, the Archbishop of Granada, Fray Hernando de Talavera. The outstanding features of the interior of the church are a Mudéjar coffered wooden ceiling, the altars and Baroque altarpieces (added later). One of those was completed in 1730 by Gregorio Salinas and is in the late Baroque style of Granada. Some images are missing due to damage during the war in 1936, although the images of Santa Clara and San Francisco de Asís remain, as well as a beautiful carving of the Immaculate Conception. On both sides of the nave there are three small altarpieces with an altar, one of which contains a carving of Santa Clara attributed to Mena. At the foot there are high and low choirs separated from the Church by iron latticework.

Isabel II visited the convent in 1862 and made a donation of 5,000 reales which paid for the new stalls for the choir. Special mention should also go to the pictorial decoration of the walls, the work of the brothers José and Vicente Cieza, depicting the life of Christ in squares divided by fake architecture as was the custom for decoration with frescoes in the churches of Granada at the end of the 18th century.

The monument has been declared a National Historic-Artistic Monument.