The convent of San Domingos de Bonaval is located in the Campo de San Domingos, in the Bonaval district of Santiago de Compostela.

Its foundation is attributed to Santo Domingo de Guzmán, in an alleged pilgrimage he made to Santiago in 1219, at the beginning of the 13th century. The oldest document in which the convent is mentioned, with the primitive invocation of Santa María, dates back to 1228. From the 15th century onwards it appears under the title of Santo Domingo, and under the patronage of the house of Altamira.

With the secularisation of the religious orders, the convent passed to the municipality of Santiago. In compliance with the Royal Decree of 1836, a commission appointed by the Deputation of A Coruña proposed the demolition of thirty buildings and designated the convent of Santo Domingo "for the barracks of the Regiments of Compostela and Santiago, with the demolition of the church". This decision was never implemented.

In 1841, through the mediation of Archbishop Vélez, the municipality turned the convent into a hospice; by 1945 the hospice still occupied the northern part and to the south, to the right of the church, there was a school for the blind and deaf and dumb. When these institutions were suppressed, it was left unoccupied for a time until the municipality decided to refurbish and use part of the premises for the Municipal Museum, which was inaugurated in December 1963.

In 1977, at the request of the recently constituted Board of Trustees of the Museo do Pobo Galego, the municipality ceded the building for the creation of the museum of the same name.

The church, built in Gothic and Renaissance style, is not currently open for worship. It was built according to the canons of Dominican Gothic with bright, diaphanous naves, shifting the point of liturgical interest from the apse to the pulpit located in the transept. Popular tradition has it that a stone fragment of the pulpit is preserved in the annexed Brotherhood of the Rosary. The church is completely covered with false vaults.

The monastery church houses in a side chapel the Pantheon of Illustrious Galicians, where the remains of several personalities of Galician culture rest, such as the writers: Rosalía de Castro, Alfredo Brañas, Ramón Cabanillas, the intellectual and cartographer Domingo Fontán, the sculptor Francisco Asorey, and the writer and cartoonist Alfonso Daniel Rodríguez Castelao.