Hospital de la Caridad

"The building dates back to the 17th century and is the headquarters of a charitable institution promoted by Miguel de Mañara, a philanthropist who cared for the most disadvantaged. Many other hospitals did not admit sick indigents, so he decided to treat these patients in the Brotherhood of the Holy Charity itself and opened the first infirmary of the hospital in June 1674. The Brotherhood of the Holy Charity was founded in the mid-15th century and the first rules of its operation date back to 1578. Its functions were to take helpless patients to the hospital, spiritually assist prisoners who were condemned to death and bury them and provide assistance with the corpses left behind by the floods in the Guadalquivir. In fact, the church is raised two metres above ground level to avoid the numerous floods and inundations of the Guadalquivir that already caused the destruction of the chapel in 1645. The façade of the church is one of the great examples of Sevillian baroque. In the upper sections are the patrons Saint George and Santiago and the three theological virtues: faith, hope and charity. In the lower part you can see the sculptures of two saintly kings: Ferdinand, King of Castile and Louis, King of France. The decoration of the temple was designed by Miguel de Mañara and for this, he counted on the best artists of the time such as Murillo, Pedro Roldán, Valdés Leal or Bernardo Simón de Pineda. In fact, in the church you can see two great works by Valdés Leal: Finis gloriae mundi and In ictu oculi. The hospital has three large rooms, which were built using the Royal Shipyards from the time of Alfonso X the Wise. In one of the hospital's courtyards there is a ceramic plaque commemorating that Mañara spent the last days of his life there."