San Pedro Museo de Arte

The building of the San Pedro Museo de Arte, formerly the Museo Poblano de Arte Virreinal, was Puebla's main hospital for almost three centuries. It was begun in 1541, in the old church of San Pedro, at the request of Fray Julián Garcés, bishop of Tlaxcala, and completed in 1647 as the Hospital of San Pedro Apóstol under Bishop Juan de Palafox y Mendoza. It became the most important experimental medical centre in New Spain. In 1867, after the French intervention, it became the State General Hospital, and in 1917 the hospital moved out and the building was left empty.

It then led very different lives: in 1946 its courtyard was roofed as a basketball court and it became the Palacio de los Deportes; in 1964 it housed Puebla's drama school, and from 1980 the state archive and civil registry. After restoration it opened as the Museo Poblano de Arte Virreinal, and in 2002 it took the name San Pedro Museo de Arte, after its origins.

It covers over a thousand square metres, with eight temporary galleries, a permanent gallery, an auditorium, a concert hall and a library of more than 8,000 volumes, with a section on colonial art and history, free to consult. Its great arcaded courtyard is among the most elegant in the city. The collection includes 17th- and 18th-century painting by Miguel Jerónimo Zendejas, Luis Berrueco, Gaspar Conrado and Cristóbal de Villalpando, and the old-hospital gallery shows medical instruments, models, patient registers and the pharmacy.