For over a century, the Col·legi de les Teresianes has been one of Antoni Gaudí's most inaccessible and unknown works. While the Sagrada Familia, La Pedrera, or Casa Batlló have become global icons visited by millions of people each year, this discreet building in the Sarrià-Sant Gervasi neighborhood —where Gaudí experimented with some of the key elements of his architectural language— has remained practically closed to the general public, reserved for the internal use of the educational center and the religious community that inhabits it.
Now, this situation is about to change: the Col·legi de les Teresianes building where Gaudí intervened will become the Gaudí Teresianes Museum in early 2028 and, for the first time, will be open to the general public. But the project is not conceived as a simple opening of the building, but as a complete immersive experience to discover the most unknown Gaudí. Thus, the tour will combine original pieces and historical documentation with audiovisual resources, models, and interactive installations.
As a whole, the museum will be structured as an experiential journey through the different rooms of the building, which will lead the visitor from the Gaudí 360º Space, an entire floor dedicated to the architect's life trajectory, towards the temporary exhibition halls, where the ideas that run through his work —such as light, transcendence, or beauty— will be explored, until reaching an immersive room that, through virtual reality, will offer an approximation to his creative process.
With all these spaces, the new facility will allow regular discovery of the interior of the Teresianes building conceived by Gaudí, until now only accessible to students and families of the educational center and open to the public on very exceptional guided tours. A part of the gardens of the enclosure will also be accessible, from where the architecture can be contemplated as a whole.
The future museum will coexist with the usual activity —teaching and religious— of the Col·legi de les Teresianes, a complex made up of various buildings. This coexistence is possible because the building where Gaudí intervened, which is the space that will become a museum in 2028, does not host teaching activity. Currently, this building is used only for complementary and management functions of the center, while teaching takes place in other buildings on the premises. When the museum opens, these uses linked to school management will progressively move to other spaces within the complex.
However, the residence of the community of nuns will remain within this same building, and they will continue to live there despite its transformation into a museum. In this way, visitors and convent life will coexist in the same building, but with differentiated spaces.
Laboratory of the Gaudian universe
The Col·legi de les Teresianes is one of the most singular works in Gaudí's career and one of the first spaces where the architect began to define some of the elements that would mark his later language. Projected from 1888, the complex starts from the architectural proposal of Joan Pons i Trabal, whose foundations and general volume Gaudí respected, but transformed completely from his own architectural conception.
At that time, coinciding with the Barcelona Universal Exhibition, Gaudí was already a recognized architect and was working on major projects such as the crypt of the Sagrada Familia. Despite everything, he accepted an apparently modest commission: a convent and school for the order of Santa Teresa, founded by Father Enric d'Ossó. The result is a construction austere in materials —brick, stone, and iron—, faithful to the vow of poverty of the Teresian order, but extraordinarily rich in spiritual meanings and architectural innovations.
In this space, Gaudí already experiments with some of the elements that will become key contributions to his architecture. The parabolic arches of the school's inner courtyard are one of the clearest examples: these are curved arches that allow the structure to be supported without the need for intermediate pillars or columns, as the weight is distributed towards the sides. This solution makes it possible for the cloister patio to remain completely open and empty, without the presence of visual obstacles.
At the same time, helical columns appear in the building, rotating on themselves as if imitating the movement of a spiral, providing a sense of dynamism to the interior. And, finally, four-armed crosses can also be observed, present in the towers and at various points on the facade, which beyond their religious symbolism become a recurring formal element in Gaudí's architecture. This type of cross reappears, for example, in the Sagrada Familia, where it culminates the Jesus Tower.
Rediscovering the Teresianes
Declared a Cultural Asset of National Interest in 1969, and despite its importance, the complex has remained practically out of reach of the general public for decades. Now, the Gaudí Teresianes Museum project —which has been authorized by the Vatican—, will allow it to be discovered for the first time on a regular basis.
The conversion into a museum comes at a particularly symbolic moment, marked by the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Company of Saint Teresa of Jesus, manager of the architectural complex, and by the commemoration of the Gaudí Year, which recalls the centenary of the architect's death and has placed his figure at the center of various institutional and cultural events, such as the visit of Pope Leo XIV to Barcelona to bless the Jesus Tower of the Sagrada Familia.
The development of the Gaudí Teresianes Museum will fall to IngeniaCultura, a spin-off of MagmaCultura —responsible for projects such as the IDEAL Centre d'Arts Digitals or the XRLAB center in Poblenou—, which will be in charge of defining the narrative and the visitor experience. For its part, the architectural proposal for the transformation of the building will be led by the studio Arquitectura Genís Planelles, the winning team of the competition for the intervention in the complex. The Catalan firm has also participated in other heritage restoration projects, such as the Verdaguer Institute or the Casa de la Festa Major in Vilafranca del Penedès.