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- Feb 4, 2024, 2:35 PM
- ☀️ 17 °C
- Altitude: 525 m
SpainAndalusiaAntequeraPlaza Coso Viejo37°0’58” N 4°33’29” W
The Museo Municipal
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It’s a warm Sunday afternoon and we just got back from a delightful walk.
There were a lot of people sitting in the numerous squares, eating their lunches, drinking wine and beer and socializing. It was nice to see, but we were headed to the municipal museum. We would stop for a beer in the sun afterwards.
The museum opened officially in 1972, after a group of local citizens discovered a bronze sculpture named 'The Ephebe of Antequera' (ephebe is an young man in ancient Greece who has just reached manhood or citizen status), measuring 1.54 metres, tall and thought to date back to the first century AD.
The Madrid museum wanted the statue as Antequera didn’t have a proper and secure museum for such a treasure, but the people in town didn’t want to give it up. It was great motivation for the townspeople to find a building and create a museum. And that’s what they did.
The Palace which houses the museum is a beautiful building, dating from the 18th century with a cut-brick tower, cloistered patio and elaborate staircase - Andalusian Baroque architecture. There is no entry fee to see the exhibits.
The museum is on four levels. The lowest level took us through the pre-history of the area, including information about the Dolmens of Antequera that we are planning to visit soon. Someone had done a great job with all the paintings in the exhibits that showed the artifacts in use.
The next level looks at the Romans and Visigoths. The Roman era brought great prosperity to Antequera (named "the Ancient City", or Antikaria, by them). The boy statue is on that floor as well as other well-preserved artefacts and mosaics that were found in the remains of a Roman villa in 1998.
The third level has some impressive glass and pottery exhibits from the Moorish period and fine silverware from the 15th – 18th centuries.
A fine arts section houses baroque paintings and sculptures, as well as paintings by Antonio Mohedano (1561-1625), who lived in Antequera. as well as 17 paintings by local contemporary painter Cristóbal Toral (1940).
We loved Toral’s paintings and all of them had a message. He painted people with piles and piles of suitcases. We read that to mean that as we travel through life we accumulate too much stuff. It could also mean that in life we are surrounded by things, or people, and we really don’t know what their contents or history are. Not sure what his message was but we did like his work.
The lady told us a little bit more about Toral. Seventy years ago, a group of hunters went into a small remote hut in the countryside and asked the owner for a drink of water. Inside they saw some pictures painted by his son, and told the dad that the boy ought to be sent to the Arts and Crafts school in the village. That man was a charcoal seller, whose wife had left him, and he didn’t have any way to get the boy to Antequera. The hunters chipped in together to buy the boy a bike so he could start the course. And that was the start to his career as a painter.
We felt that the museum did an excellent job in describing the varied and interesting history of Antequera. The pieces that they had were in great shape and the art gallery on the top floor was wonderful.
We left the museum, sat in the square in front of it and had our beers in the sun.Read more