Art Centre La Panera
The Art Centre of La Panera is a cultural facility that offers an opportunity to keep up with the most recent developments in art through a series of exhibitions and activity programmes.
A commitment to support and promote contemporary art is backed up with guided visits for everybody and free access to a specialized reference library housed in the Document Centre.
The Centre’s work is founded on the conviction that contemporary art represents an essential key to understanding the world we live in and the problems and issues that affect it, not only in terms of artistic creation but also throughout society at large.
At the same time, the Centre is designed as a platform for the creation and exhibition of the visual arts in Spain, with a view to building bridges between visual creativity and the creativity originating from other cultural fields.
The Old Corn Exchange and Market
The building that houses the Art Centre of La Panera dates back to the Consulate period of the 12th and 13th centuries, one of the most prosperous episodes in Medieval Lleida.
El Almodí, as the building was then known, was the city’s trading house and the place where many goods were traded, such as cereals, oil and grapes. The original colonnade from the Medieval building, a line of 21 stone columns rising to a height of 5.7 metres, still survives.
In 1606, El Almodí was acquired by the Cathedral Canons, who enclosed it within a perimeter wall and built another floor above the original colonnade, giving the building the form it has today. It was used to store and sell the produce collected by the Canons, hence its present name, La Panera dels Canonges (The Canons’ Pantry).
With the seizure of the monasteries in 1835 it passed into the hands of the Paeria, or local government, which offered it to the army. In 1860 it became the cavalry barracks, and was subsequently used as a police station before being returned to the Paeria at the end of the 1980s. The decision was taken to turn it into an art centre, and recent refurbishment work has revealed the Medieval colonnade in all its glory.
Contact
2 Panera Square
Phone: 973 262 185
www.lapanera.cat
Opening Hours
Entrance fee
Free entry
