The Museu de Belles Arts de València is an art gallery in Valencia, Spain, founded in 1913. It houses some 2,000 works, most dating from the 14th–17th centuries, including a Self portrait of Diego Velázquez, a St. John the Baptist by El Greco, Goya's Playing Children, Gonzalo Pérez's Altarpiece of Sts. Ursula, Martin and Antony and a Madonna with Writing Child and Bishop by the Italian Renaissance master Pinturicchio. It houses a large series of engravings by Giovan Battista Piranesi.
The museum is in the St. Pius V Palace, built in the 17th–18th centuries. It has also sections dedicated to sculpture, to contemporary art and to archaeological findings.
The Metropolitan Cathedral–Basilica of the Assumption of Our Lady of Valencia , alternatively known as Saint Mary's Cathedral or Valencia Cathedral, is a Roman Catholic parish church in Valencia, Spain.
The cathedral was consecrated in 1238 by the first bishop of Valencia after the Reconquista, Pere d'Albalat, Archbishop of Tarragona, and was dedicated to Saint Mary by order of James I the Conqueror. It was built over the site of the former Visigothic cathedral, which under the Moors had been turned into a mosque. Valencian Gothic is the predominant architectural style of the cathedral, although it also contains Romanesque, French Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque and Neoclassical elements.
The cathedral contains numerous 15th-century paintings, some by local artists , others by artists from Rome engaged by the Valencian Pope Alexander VI who, when still a cardinal, made the request to elevate the Valencian See to the rank of metropolitan see, a category granted by Pope Innocent VIII in 1492.
The Real Colegio Seminario del Corpus Christi is a former Roman Catholic seminary, now museum, on calle de la Nau in the Spanish city of Valencia in the old city opposite La Nau, the former Universidad Literaria. The college complex was built between 1586 and 1615 and now hosts the little-known Museum of the Patriarch.The Patriarch, Real College and the Seminary of Corpus Christi are a church, a seminary and a college, respectively. Work on the buildings began in 1586 and finished in 1610. It is structured around a large renaissance cloister enclosing the church, the communion chapel, the library, the sleeping quarters and the classrooms. There is another courtyard at the back and a small belfry is located in the corner of the plaza.Archbishop Juan de Ribera of Valencia, who built the College, arranged housing there for the Franciscan nun, mystic Sr. Margarita Agullona so he could bear witness to her mystical raptures and for 25 years. When she died, he had her remains moved there. "He ordered in February 1605, that the body of the Venerable, who was incorrupt, be moved, and arranged that a burning lamp always burned before her sepulcher."The Patriarch, has been a National Monument since 1962 and it became a Monument of Cultural Interest in 2007, and remains an excellent example of Renaissance architecture. Of special note in the Patriarch Museum are paintings by Caravaggio, El Greco, Van Der teyden, Benlliure, Ribalta and Pinazo, as well as an original manuscript by Sir Thomas More.
