HAAN, Ignacio - b. 1758 Alicante, d. 1810 Madrid

Spanish architect, considered one of the most important architects of the Neoclassical style in Spain. He was a disciple of Francesco Sabatini. He had come from his hometown to Madrid to study at the Royal Academy of San Fernando, where he graduated and obtained a pension in Rome. He developed almost all of his work in Toledo under the protection of Cardinal Francisco de Lorenzana.

In the imperial city he created his most famous works, such as the Puerta Llana of the cathedral, completed in 1800. It is the most modern door of the church showing a severe classicism. He also designed the altar that frames the famous painting El Espolio by El Greco, where perhaps to adapt to the sacristy’s ornate space, shows a style closer to the Baroque, the contrasting use of materials and the general effect of richness.

In Toledo he also made the building of the Royal University, which again shows its austere and refined classicist style, with a special preference for the use of simple colonnades, visible on the façade and in the courtyard.

Exterior view

Toledo owes many of its functional buildings - a new sword factory, a mental asylum, and the university - to the far-sightedness of Cardinal Francisco Antonio de Lorenzana. The university was built by Ignacio Haan, a pupil of Sabatini and a scholarship holder in Rome, who created two buildings that represent the pinnacle of their age. The university, with its dignified Ionic patio from 1790 and Corinthian assembly hall, the auditorium, merge unobtrusively into the modest architectural scale of Toledo in spite of their monumentality and marked differences in height.

The photo shows the inner courtyard of the university.