The Sabatini Building and Its Glass Lifts
Francesco Sabatini; lift towers by Ian Ritchie Architects (Sabatini 1721 to 1797) · 1756 to 1781; lifts 1990
The museum's main home is a huge, plain, grey stone box with rows of identical windows, and on its facade cling three towers of glass and steel in which lifts rise and fall in full view of the street. The contrast is the whole idea. The building was begun in 1756 as the General Hospital of Madrid under King Charles the Third, designed by his Italian court architect Francesco Sabatini, and it was meant to be even bigger: only about a third of the plan was ever built. Its long vaulted wards, thick walls and cool inner courtyard are perfectly suited to showing art.
Look at the granite of the lower storeys and the brick above, the enormous cornice and the near total absence of ornament, which was unusual in the Baroque century. Inside, the galleries are the old wards, and the corridors round the courtyard still have the feel of a hospital cloister. The hospital closed in 1965 and the building was nearly demolished before being declared a monument in 1977. The conversion to a museum began in 1980, and in 1990 the British architect Ian Ritchie added the three glass lift towers, which give access to every floor without cutting through the historic structure and have become the museum's emblem.
The Reina Sofía art centre opened here in 1986 and became a national museum in 1988, taking the name of Queen Sofía. Ride the lift to the top floor and look out over Atocha station and the roofs of the Lavapiés district before you go inside. The courtyard garden below, planted with cypresses and hedges and dotted with sculptures, was the hospital's exercise yard.
Did You Know? The hospital was so large that during the nineteenth century it also housed a medical school, a convent and a barracks at the same time.
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