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 (4 months ago)
Good selection of Spanish artists works.

Miriam R. Lampon (10 months ago)
All in one gathering of Gallego & Spanish art/artifacts collections. Very interesting display in one location.

Robert Hamel (14 months ago)
I wish I had had more time to spend there. It was great.

Frank The Realist (16 months 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 (17 months 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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The famous Italian Medici family have given two queens to France: Catherine, the spouse of Henry II, and Marie, widow of Henry IV, who built the current Luxembourg palace. Maria di Medici had never been happy at the Louvre, still semi-medieval, where the fickle king, did not hesitate to receive his mistresses. The death of Henry IV, assassinated in 1610, left the way open for Marie's project. When she became regent, she was able to give special attention to the construction of an imposing modern residence that would be reminiscent of the Palazzo Pitti and the Boboli Gardens in Florence, where she grew up. The development of the 25-hectare park, which was to serve as a jewel-case for the palace, began immediately.

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During the French Revolution the palace was first abandoned and then moved as a national prison. After that it was the seat of the French Directory, and in 1799, the home of the Sénat conservateur and the first residence of Napoleon Bonaparte, as First Consul of the French Republic. The old apartments of Maria di Medici were altered. The floor, which the 80 senators only occupied in 1804, was built in the middle of the present Conference Hall.

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