And this is?

You guessed it, a former hospital. More specifically, the entrance building to Recinte Modernista Sant Pau in Barcelona (as its web site seems to style it in Catalan). Formerly, Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau. I defer to the succinct article about the place in Atlas Obscura.

“In the late 19th century, Barcelona was expanding beyond its old city walls, and beyond the Hospital de la Santa Creuwhich had served the city since the early 1400s. In 1896 a wealthy Catalan banker named Pau Gil i Serra died, leaving behind a will that requested his estate be used for a new hospital that would utilize the newest available medical technology.

“Catalan architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner designed the site, which would represent the merging of six of Barcelona’s hospitals… Sixteen of the structures were built in the Modernist style and, though guidebooks and tourists often overlook the site, make up the largest Art Nouveau site in the world.”

“The Hospital de Sant Pau was fully functioning until 2009, when a new building, erected in the northern half of the complex, took over the duties. Several of the historic buildings were refurbished over the next several years. The site, designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997, reopened to the public in 2014.”

A few details.

Not to neglect the detail underfoot.

Murals and mosaics.

In its time as a healthcare campus, each building had a specialty, or set of specialties. The buildings opened onto gardened plazas; windows provided natural light to the building interiors. Many more modern hospitals are still playing catchup in those regards. Restoration work began in 2009 and is ongoing.

Some of the interiors are exhibits, such as a recreation of an early 20th-century hospital room, when the facility was new.

Some wards are unrestored, and there’s scaffolding on some of their outsides.

Other buildings house various international NGOs associated with health, such as the Barcelona office of Eurorids, Rare Diseases Europe.

The front building is event space.

Gobsmacked, I was. The place made me smack my gob. Amazingly unlike any notion I have of a hospital. Guess I have to revise my notions of what hospitals can look like.