Church of the Pious Schools of Valencia

The building of the Pious Schools is located at 6 Carnissers Street, in the Velluters neighborhood of the city of Valencia, the Horta, Valencia Region. Built during the second half of the 18th century, it is an example of the architectural change occurring at that time in the city.

The Piarist school was founded in 1735, with the support of the Count of Carlet, Felip Lino de Castellví. The person in charge of constructing the new building, austere and solid, was the architect friar of the order, Blas del Espíritu Santo, between 1739 and 1742, but the church was never built due to a lack of funds. Later, in the sixties of the 18th century, Archbishop Andres Mayoral, the true promoter of the work and who had a good architectural culture, decided to push forward the construction, commissioning projects from various architects. We know from Antonio Ponz that the archbishop intended for the new church to "differ from the figure of other Valencian temples" and also that for this desire for innovation he had commissioned an inspection of the church of las Bernardas in Alcalá de Henares, where he had studied. Two projects for the Piarist church are known, made by the prestigious Carmelite architect friar Albert Pina; one would be a compositional paraphrase in an oblique-rectilinear key of the aforementioned oval temple of Alcalá de Henares, and it would have an elongated octagonal plan along the longitudinal axis and surrounded by a crown of rectangular-plan chapels.

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