The Santa Cruz museum offers its visitors a space in which it is intended to show collections that have no place in the scheduled exhibitions. These works have also been the subject of work carried out by museum personnel or external to it. Thus, it will be possible to contemplate pieces that have recently entered the museum, objects lent for exhibitions held in other museum institutions, restored goods or funds on which research has been carried out, among others.
The Museum of Santa Cruz takes its name from the building that serves as its headquarters, the old Hospital de Santa Cruz, founded by Cardinal Pedro González de Mendoza (1428-1495) as a general hospital and for the fostering of foundlings.
The building was built in the first decades of the 16th century, after the death of its founder, and is one of the architectural masterpieces of the Spanish Renaissance. It has a Greek cross plan with two floors, a large central transept open to both floors and a total of eight bays, plus another room above the hall, all of them covered with wooden roofs. It also has two cloistered courtyards arranged between its arms.
Signature figures such as Antón and Enrique Egas, famous Toledo architects of Flemish origin, and the master Alonso de Covarrubias worked on its design and execution.
Its magnificent doorway, dedicated to the devotion to the Holy Cross, the main cloister and the splendid Covarrubias staircase, in the main patio, justify a visit to this Museum by itself.
