Sant Bonaventura Convent

Religious | Llucmajor

The history of the Sant Bonaventura (Saint Bonaventura) convent begins in 1608, when the first group of Franciscans reached Llucmajor. The definitive convent complex was built throughout the 17th century, and it includes a church, a cloister, several auxiliary buildings and a vegetable garden. The church was blessed in 1656, and the church roof was finished in 1691. The internal spaces of the convent – cells, workshop, refectory, kitchen, library, chapterhouse, etc. – are arranged around the cloister, which was finished between 1690 and 1697. This cloister features the Baroque style of the Franciscans: a square shape with a double superimposed gallery with semicircular arches held up on quadrangular pilasters, and outer pillars topped by relief stone balls. The convent premises were occupied by the Franciscan order until the Mendizábal Disentailment (1836). From then until 1998, the complex was used as a Civil Guard barracks, the Justice of the Peace and a municipal slaughterhouse. As a result of these varied uses, the complex became architecturally distorted, so in 1999 its refurbishment was undertaken, reconverting it into a civic, social and cultural centre. It was declared an Asset of Cultural Interest in 2002. The murals, repeatedly whitewashed after the disentailment, were uncovered in 1999 by a group of historians from the University of the Balearic Islands. Restored today, they are an iconographic testimony of the history of the Franciscan order.