The present work´s aim consists of historical and graphical analysis of the convent of San Francisco de Betanzos disappeared after Mendizabal´s Desamortización in 1835 and also physical transformations of the monastery and its surroundings, studying use changes since its founding until recent times.
There has made virtual reconstruction through infographic models along different stages of birth and growth of the disapared convent, and all projects drawn and executed in the resulting urban space. The analysis in three dimensions -ranging from the fourteenth to the twentieth centuries-, has developed interacting in each period with the evolution of the city of Betanzos.
The convent was born outside the city wall, occupying a considerable area in the northwest corner of Betanzos, in the English route of the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. Its location in an ancient Templarian settlement, was strategic for several reasons: crossroads, confluence of rivers Mandeo and Mendo and not far from the urban center. The promoter was the nobleman Fernán Pérez de Andrade "O Boo"- King Henry II of Trastamara´s favorite-, from the very beginning the church became a Pantheon for the nobility.
The episodes of plague and fire did not prevent increase vocations in several stages, creating four successive enlargements from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century.
The architecture of the whole Convent was conditioned by the ideal of poverty inherent to the Order and the dominating scholastic philosophy in those years. The geometry, the symmetry and the hierarchical use of spaces established a design different to the rest of the buildings in the village, which kept close to the hill, but converted the original plan into a reproduction of the Celestial City.
The Gothic style- introduced by the Franciscans in Galicia-, was adopted by the building searching for divinity in light and high temples, reproducing the Celestial City. The kings that succeeded favored the convent, especially the Queen Isabel the Catholic, who belonged to the Third Order. The city and the convent are growing in unison.
The second wall of Betanzos was built in the fifteenth century -marking thetown boundary-, and the convent came inside the defensive line in less than a century, incorporating it into its construction as a structural element and transforming the convent in a fort building.
The convent became more complex as their settlement was consolidated in Betanzos, becoming an independent site, which a church, a residence for monks and novices, Latin´s Readers and other disciplines, hospice, library, archive and orchards.
The liberal ideology together with the weakening of the Monarchy established important changes until Mendizabal´s Desamortización in 1835 and the starting point of the demolition of the Convent.
The space occupied by the convent was progressively divided, changing uses and owners. The new bourgeoisie of Betanzos returned to the convent to develop architectures with own names and diferent styles.
Urban, social, historical, architectural, religious and educational changes in Betanzos are printed on the standing walls, which was one of the great monasteries of Galicia.
Key words : Franciscan Order, Medieval Architecture, Escolastic Philosophy, Gothic Style, English Way of Santiago de Compostela, Betanzos, Desamortización de Mendizabal.