The Hospital of the Holy Spirit was established in 1332–39 by Konrad Gross, a wealthy patrician, for the care for the elderly and needy. It was the largest private endowment in the Holy Roman Empire up to 1500. After 1500 the building complex was extended over the Pegnitz according to plans by Hans Beheim the Elder. Two structures along the southern arm of the river and the north wall of the former hospital church with its polygonal ridge-turret (Hans Sachs Platz) survive.
From 1424 to 1796, the imperial regalia were kept in the hospital church (not reconstructed after the war). In the ”Hanselhof“, Nürnberg’s earliest large-scale cast bronze sculpture (ca 1380; original in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum). In the arcaded ”Kreuzigungshof“, the central figures of Adam Kraft’s Crucifixion group (ca 1506/08) and the tomb monuments of Konrad Gross (d. 1356) and Herdegen Valzner (d. 1423).