Pontevedra Museum, Pontevedra, Spain

The museum's collections are distributed over five different venues: Santo Domingo Convent, Sarmiento Palace, the Castro Monteagudo building, and the García Flórez and Fernández López buildings.

At the 18th-century Castro Monteagudo building you can see collections of archaeology, traditional and civil pre-Roman and Roman precious metalwork (Fernández de la Mora collection), as well as Spanish, Italian and Flemish painting from the 15th-18th centuries. The García Flórez building dates from the 18th century and is joined to the aforementioned, with items in jet, engravings, religious sculptures, Sargadelos earthenware, the office of Admiral Méndez Núñez, and a reproduction of a chamber from the Numancia Frigate, as well as a traditional Galician kitchen. In the same square as the two buildings already mentioned is the Fernández López building, home to the exhibitions of 19th and 20th-century Spanish painting. Next to San Bartolomé Church is the Sarmiento building (18th century), which is dedicated to contemporary Galician painting and temporary exhibitions. In the ruins of the Santo Domingo Convent you can see diverse archaeological remains, such as Romanesque and Gothic capitals, sarcophagi and tombstones.

References:

spain.info

Museums in Spain

User Reviews

Julia O (8 months ago)
Good selection of Spanish artists works.

Miriam R. Lampon (14 months ago)
All in one gathering of Gallego & Spanish art/artifacts collections. Very interesting display in one location.

Robert Hamel (2 years ago)
I wish I had had more time to spend there. It was great.

Frank The Realist (2 years ago)
I'm a history buff by nature. This place had so much I appreciated and I learned more than I could have by just reading about it in a book. The city is full of such education. I was beyond impressed. This vacation has been so good despite the rain. Yeah, it's been raining for almost a week but the museum is a wonderful place to visit on a rainy day. I seriously enjoyed it.

Maynard Dodson (2 years ago)
The space is huge and there's a lot of work presented. I didn't find the artwork to be all that incredible but at least there was a lot to look at. The free admission also helped.

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German crusaders known as the Livonian Brothers of the Sword began construction of the Cēsis castle (Wenden) near the hill fort in 1209. When the castle was enlarged and fortified, it served as the residence for the Order's Master from 1237 till 1561, with periodic interruptions. Its ruins are some of the most majestic castle ruins in the Baltic states. Once the most important castle of the Livonian Order, it was the official residence for the masters of the order.

In 1577, during the Livonian War, the garrison destroyed the castle to prevent it from falling into the control of Ivan the Terrible, who was decisively defeated in the Battle of Wenden (1578).

In 1598 it was incorporated into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Wenden Voivodship was created here. In 1620 Wenden was conquered by Sweden. It was rebuilt afterwards, but was destroyed again in 1703 during the Great Northern War by the Russian army and left in a ruined state. Already from the end of the 16th century, the premises of the Order's castle were adjusted to the requirements of the Cēsis Castle estate. When in 1777 the Cēsis Castle estate was obtained by Count Carl Sievers, he had his new residence house built on the site of the eastern block of the castle, joining its end wall with the fortification tower.

Since 1949, the Cēsis History Museum has been located in this New Castle of the Cēsis Castle estate. The front yard of the New Castle is enclosed by a granary and a stable-coach house, which now houses the Exhibition Hall of the Museum. Beside the granary there is the oldest brewery in Latvia, Cēsu alus darītava, which was built in 1878 during the later Count Sievers' time, but its origins date back to the period of the Livonian Order. Further on, the Cēsis Castle park is situated, which was laid out in 1812. The park has the romantic characteristic of that time, with its winding footpaths, exotic plants, and the waters of the pond reflecting the castle's ruins. Nowadays also one of the towers is open for tourists.

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