Saint Clare's Convent

The Saint Clare's Convent of Manresa is a complex composed of several religious and charitable buildings located in the highest part of the Les Escodines district. Its construction began between the late 13th and early 14th centuries, with the establishment of the city’s first community of Clare's nuns.

According to the canonization processes of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the future saint used to sit by the entrance of the convent to listen to the nuns’ daily chants. At the time when Saint Ignatius arrived in Manresa, one of the branches of the Manresa Sèquia (irrigation canal) passed through this point, coming from the El Guix area. This branch supplied water to the orchards of Les Escodines and the Vall del Paradís (Fans Spring). Decades later, both the Capuchin and Jesuit monks also made use of its waters to irrigate the gardens of the Convent of Sant Bartomeu and the Sanctuary of the Cave of Saint Ignatius, respectively.

The medieval monumental complex was later complemented by renovations carried out in the 17th century, when the occupying community changed and the site passed into the hands of a cloistered congregation of Dominican nuns. In 1904, the renowned architect Alexandre Soler i March designed a new expansion, creating a modernist-style structure that would dominate the west façade. Today, the convent is still managed by a small community of Dominican nuns, who share part of the historic architectural complex with a charitable foundation.