Museo de Santa Cruz

As you might expect from a historic ancient city, the Historic City of Toledo has numerous old buildings dating back to the time of its heyday. Back then, Toledo was the place to be. Toledo was well known even in during the times of the Romans where it was the capital of this province. Its importance continued on to the succeeding kingdoms where it was the capital of the Visigothic Spain. This continued when this area was conquered by the Moors. This also led to the start of a very multicultural Toledo. When the Christian recaptured Toledo, it flourished and became a center of culture and knowledge.

It was only when the capital of Spain was moved to Madrid that the fortunes of Toledo waned. The population of Toledo dropped as people started emigrating to nearby Madrid. This seeming abandonment of Toledo proved to be a blessing as well, since a lot of their buildings and culture was remarkably preserved. One of the buildings here in Toledo is the striking Museo de Santa Cruz or Holy Cross museum. It used to be a charitable hospital catering to the poor. If you look at it you won’t even be able to tell that it was once a hospital. The facade of the hospital is certainly the most striking. As it looks more like a church entrance than a hospital. These days it is now a museum. At the time of visit, it was showing the works of famed artist El Greco who once worked in this city. Unfortunately, the queue for the museum was quite slow and I didn’t have all day. I decided to have a look at the other places first before coming back here.

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