Santa Cruz Museum

SANTA CRUZ

The Santa Cruz Museum is a 16th century building in the city of Toledo. Originally it was an important hospital.. Its transformation into a museum took place in the 19th century..

It is one of the masterpieces of the Spanish Renaissance. Its cover or its cloister staircase are the work of the architect Alonso de Covarrubias.

Inside we find paintings from the Toledo school of the 16th and 17th centuries., with special attention to El Greco and Luis Tristán.

COLLECTIONS

We find inside three important collections: roman archeology, visigothic, Arabic and Mudejar; of Toledo painting from the 16th-17th centuries, with works by El Greco; and industrial arts, with examples of popular culture and local craft tradition.

The visit begins on the ground floor. The Noble Cloister houses a series of pieces, from the Neolithic to the Renaissance, linked to the funerary world. Also on display is a brilliant marine-themed Roman mosaic from a Roman villa.

On the upper floor is the main nucleus of the permanent collection of the Museum. The pieces are presented in a chronological sequence, from prehistory to the 20th century: stone tools, bronze age ceramics, Iberian trousseau, roman statuary, islamic epigraphy, medieval furniture and masterpieces of the Spanish and European Renaissance, including paintings by Domenikos Theotocopuli and El Greco.

The exhibition closes with baroques by the likes of Luca Giordano and José de Ribera, and with contemporaries such as Vicente Cutanda or Alberto Sánchez, prominent 20th-century avant-garde sculptor.

To end, the museum offers the visitor the ceramic collection of Vicente Carranza, one of the best collections of Spanish ceramics.