Convent of the Salesas Reales
cultural property in Madrid, Spain
The Convent of the Salesas Reales is an 18th-century architectural complex in central Madrid, Spain. Formerly a convent, specifically the convent of the Visitación de Nuestra Señora (Visitation of Our Lady), it was constructed and occupied by the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary, which had been founded by St. Francis de Sales and St Jeanne de Chantal. The convent's church (dedicated to St Barbara) is now a parish church, and the remainder of the complex houses the Supreme Court of Spain. During 1963 until 1977, the facility was the headquarters of the Court of Public Order, a court created in Francoist Spain to deal with most political crimes. The Court of Public Order was established in December 1963 following Julián Grimau's execution by firing squad, replacing the Tribunal Especial para la Represión de la Masonería y el Comunismo.
History
The convent was founded in 1748 by Queen Barbara of Portugal, wife of King Ferdinand VI, as a school and home for young noble women. She sought not just to establish a convent, but also a convenient place where she could retire. The convent was designed by François Carlier, and construction started in 1743. The original plans were modified and completed by 1750 by Francisco Moradillo.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Convent of the Salesas Reales” is cultural property in Madrid, Spain. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Convent, Salesas and Reales, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4889473. VIAF identifies the subject as 4193147373416641580000. Authority coordinates are 40.424, -3.694. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1963, 1977, 1748 and 1743.
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This entry incorporates text from “Convent of the Salesas Reales” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.