|
|
|
History
The District Museum of La Noguera was a result of the agreement signed between
the Department of Culture of the Generalitat de Catalunya and the Balaguer town council
on the 31st of January 1983, which set the transformation of the old Municipal Museum
of Balaguer, situated on the second floor of the town hall, into a district museum.
According to this document, its objective was to administer and organise the museum
patrimony of Balaguer, seek the coordination of the museum activity of the whole
district, and the development at the service of the tasks of research, documentation,
conservation-reservation, diffusion and education of the entire patrimony of the
district.
The agreement between Balaguer town council and the Parish of Santa Maria de Balaguer
allowed the District Museum to take over the building of the old church of Sant Josep,
built at the beginning of the 18th century, which despite having many structural
problems allowed, after renovation, the doors of the museum to be opened on the 22nd
of May 1987. The facility contemplated the fundamental spaces of any museum: storerooms,
restoration workshop, library-consulting room, and exhibition room. What remained
of the original structure of the 18th century building, the Latin cross plan of the
church, was maintained intact, with intervention on the later additions of both the
transept and the lateral chapels and the sacristy. For two years the programming
of the museum was concentrated on a varied offer of temporary exhibitions, both internally
and externally produced, at the same time as the thematic proposal of the Synthesis
Room of the museum was drawn up, which was inaugurated in October 1989. The guiding
thread of the exhibition was historic and related to the district, and covered prehistoric
times to the beginning of the modern age.
However, the Islamic and County patrimony of the district of La Noguera, and especially
that of the city of Balaguer, has always formed one of the most important groups
of this period in Catalonia, both for the quantity and the quality of its remains.
The importance of this patrimony was one of the determining factors in the creation
of the District Museum of La Noguera in 1983 as well as it also being recognised
by both public and private institutions, above all after 1982, when the archaeological
excavations at Castle Formós were restarted and those at the Pla díAlmatà
commenced. These interventions have always been linked with the museum project designed
for Balaguer, and have signified the starting point of a whole new orientation for
the museum based on a central headquarters and a set of radial sites among which
we should highlight the sites mentioned and the urban centre of the town itself.
The District Museum of La Noguera would become the centre of interpretation and dynamisation
of the patrimony of the medieval epoch of the city of Balaguer.
The Department of Culture itself understood that the starting point of this project
included the construction of a new building, which would become the central headquarters
of this project, and which was commissioned from the team formed by the architects
Humbert Costas and Manel Gomez. The works began in December 1992.
On the 25th of May 1995 the new centre was inaugurated in the Plaça dels Comtes
díUrgell with the exhibition "The Master of Balaguer (16th Century)", as
well as with one of the radial sites planned in the project, the Archaeological Garden
of Castle Formós. In the same year the Archaeology Service of the Department
of Culture of the Generalitat began the procedures for the declaration of B.C.I.N.
(Cultural Asset of National Interest) of one of the other radial sites planned, the
Pla d'Almatà.
Two years passed and on the 19th of April 1997 the permanent exhibition of the museum
was inaugurated with a montage that carries the generic title "Hisn Balagî-Balaguer.
From the Medina to the City". |
|
