Convent and church

CONVENT AND CHURCH OF SAN FRANCISCO DE PAULA

After the disentailment, by the Order of 20 February 1821, the convent of the Minims of Viver was suppressed. At first it passed into the hands of the State and from the State to the Town Council, and was used as a primary school, courthouse and prison. During the last decades of the 20th century, it housed the offices of the Agricultural Chamber and the Civil Guard Barracks. Substantial uses and transformations over time deteriorated the building.

As the house of a mendicant order, the building is characterised by its monumental modesty. It conserves a central square cloister that connects with the church and articulates the three wings of the convent building with the double floor of corridors. The Church of San Francisco de Paula, dating from 1607, was built by a certain Barberan de Rubielos de Mora, renovated and rebuilt as an ex-convent in 1852.

The first convent of the Order of Friars Minor was founded in Viver next to the hermitage of San Miguel in 1603. Although according to the historian Escolano, the monks had already settled there in 1535. On 10 July 1605, with the permission of the Bishop of Segorbe, Don Feliciano de Figueroa, and the Father Prior of the Jerónimo de San Miguel de los Reyes Monastery in Valencia, then owner of the town of Viver, the monks moved to this new building, then located outside the town walls (scene depicted on the polychrome ceramic tile panel on the outside of the side wall of the convent church).