The royal convent of the Holy Trinity in Valencia, belonging to the nuns of St. Clare, is a building of considerable historical importance. It was founded by Queen Maria of Castille, consort of King Alfonso V the Magnanimous, who ruled the Kingdom during the absence of her husband. The Queen ordered the building of her tomb in the cloister, where she is buried. During the second half of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the next, the convent experienced a period of particular brilliance and was a focal point in the cultural and religious history of the city of Valencia. Evidence of such splendour is that, during this period, the convent was associated with a number of outstanding people. The well-known literary figure, Sister Isabel de Villena, was Abbess there. A poet of genius, Jaume Roig, was doctor to the community, and Maria de Aragon, daughter of King Fernando the Catholic, was buried there. The German traveller Jerome Münzer, after visiting Valencia in 1494 and referring to the convent, wrote saying “I have never seen a Church to compare with it, in ornament and quantity of richly decorated altarpieces. The shear sight of it arouses great astonishment.”

 

But the importance of the convent does not lie merely in its history, in the continuation through the centuries of the foundation or in the valuable decorative art which, in spite of losses, still remains. Its architecture is a key to the proper understanding of Valencian architecture of the fifteenth century, of the renewal in techniques of construction which occurred during the period, and of the beginnings of modern stereotomy.