Archaeological Museum of Granada, Granada, Spain

The Archaeological Museum of Granada was established in 1879. It is located in the Castril palace, dating from the 16th century. It hosts many artefacts from the many different civilizations that settled in Granada including the Carthaginians, the Phoenicians, the Romans and the Arabs. It includes a beautiful Renaissance patio. The building's façade was created in 1593.

References:

Wikipedia

Museums in Spain

User Reviews

SabsAnna15 Gmail (5 months ago)
Great museum, with a limited selection of exhibits which,as we thought, makes it all more relevant (so you can focus on each piece and enjoy the story and significance). Free also, and lovely and cool, a great time travel when in a city with such historical significance

Paul Farrell (5 months ago)
Small museum...nice expanation of each archaeological period...Free entry

Esben Kobberstad (ThatNorwegianAuthorDude) (6 months ago)
A modest but informative museum situated along the tourist track! Admission is free, so if you have a brief hour to spare, this place will get you up to speed on the salient points South Spanish pre-history and early history.

Megan Kenna (11 months ago)
1.50 for visitors, and a nice 20-minute museum to see the long archeological history of the area.

Ian Witham (11 months ago)
Very well curated. Good layout, well explained, interesting exhibits. Great view of Alhambra from the top floor. Free when we visited.

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Broch of Gurness

The Broch of Gurness is an Iron Age broch village. Settlement here began sometime between 500 and 200 BC. At the centre of the settlement is a stone tower or broch, which once probably reached a height of around 10 metres. Its interior is divided into sections by upright slabs. The tower features two skins of drystone walls, with stone-floored galleries in between. These are accessed by steps. Stone ledges suggest that there was once an upper storey with a timber floor. The roof would have been thatched, surrounded by a wall walk linked by stairs to the ground floor. The broch features two hearths and a subterranean stone cistern with steps leading down into it. It is thought to have some religious significance, relating to an Iron Age cult of the underground.

The remains of the central tower are up to 3.6 metres high, and the stone walls are up to 4.1 metres thick. The tower was likely inhabited by the principal family or clan of the area but also served as a last resort for the village in case of an attack.

The broch continued to be inhabited while it began to collapse and the original structures were altered. The cistern was filled in and the interior was repartitioned. The ruin visible today reflects this secondary phase of the broch's use.

The site is surrounded by three ditches cut out of the rock with stone ramparts, encircling an area of around 45 metres diameter. The remains of numerous small stone dwellings with small yards and sheds can be found between the inner ditch and the tower. These were built after the tower, but were a part of the settlement's initial conception. A 'main street' connects the outer entrance to the broch. The settlement is the best-preserved of all broch villages.

Pieces of a Roman amphora dating to before 60 AD were found here, lending weight to the record that a 'King of Orkney' submitted to Emperor Claudius at Colchester in 43 AD.

At some point after 100 AD the broch was abandoned and the ditches filled in. It is thought that settlement at the broch continued into the 5th century AD, the period known as Pictish times. By that time the broch was not used anymore and some of its stones were reused to build smaller dwellings on top of the earlier buildings. Until about the 8th century, the site was just a single farmstead.

In the 9th century, a Norse woman was buried at the site in a stone-lined grave with two bronze brooches and a sickle and knife made from iron. Other finds suggest that Norse men were buried here too.

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