Credits

Catalogue

THE DESCENT

  1. Catalogue
  2. THE DESCENT
National Museum of Archaeology as seen from the outside
J.L. De Diego  

SURROUNDINGS 

The National Archaeological Museum was founded on the 20th of March, 1867, by decree of queen Isabel II so that the nation would finally have an institution in which the conservation, study and dissemination of those works of an archaeological, ethnographic and numismatic nature making up the royal collections could be undertaken.

The Museum's first headquarters was in a palace in Embajadores Street, Madrid, that had belonged to Isabel de Braganza, the wife of king Ferdinand VII. The Museum was officially inaugurated in 1871 by king Amadeus I of Saboya.

Since 1895, the Museum is located in the Palace of Libraries and Museums (Palacio de Bibliotecas y Museos), a neo-Classical style monument designed by architects Francisco Jareño and Antonio Ruiz de Salces, who also built the National Library (Biblioteca Nacional). The Museum, whose façade gives on to Serrano Street, Madrid, was completely revamped between 2008 and 2014.

Among the many works making up the Museum's incalculably valuable collections are the more than three hundred pieces of Gothic sculptures described in a dedicated catalogue drafted by Angela Franco Mata.