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The Department of Culture and Historical Heritage of La Vila Joiosa Town Council and the Provincial Archaeological Museum of Alicante, through its MARQ Foundation, are organising the exhibition "La Vila Joiosa: Archaeology and Museum". From the beginning of December 2011 until the end of February 2012 the temporary rooms of the MARQ will show 130 main pieces from the Museum of La Vila, many of them will be exhibited outside La Vila for the first time.
The exhibition is the ninth edition of the series "Municipal Museums in the MARQ" which in recent years has sought to give prominence to the most important archaeological collections of the province.
The councillor for Historical Heritage and Culture of the town council of Vila, Pepe Lloret, recalled that "this exhibition will mean a great public dissemination of Vila's heritage, which totals 33% of the monuments declared BIC of the Marina Baixa and is in tenth place in the Valencian Community. This means for the MARQ to dress its temporary halls for three months with the collection of one of the most monumental cities of the Valencian Community".
The collaboration between the two museums has led to the production of a video that reviews the historical heritage of La Vila, which can be viewed during the exhibition; a catalogue signed by different specialists that reviews the natural and cultural heritage of the town and the region up to the present day, which will become a reference publication for those who want to learn more about its history and landscape; and an educational guide for school visits has been produced.
The Director of the Museum of La Vila, Antonio Espinosa, explained that "in addition, thanks to this exhibition, our museum will be able to benefit from obtaining a complete photographic report of the highest quality of the museum's collections, the restoration of pieces pending in the laboratories of both museums, the filming of video images of the main monuments and virtual reconstructions of some of them, among other benefits. All this work will later be used in the new Museum of La Vila Joiosa as well as in its catalogue".
The exhibition at MARQ will be a unique opportunity to contemplate, before the inauguration of the new Museum, one of the most outstanding archaeological collections of the Valencian Community, with numerous unique or extraordinary pieces in the Iberian Peninsula. Some pieces of great value have been specially restored for the occasion, and others will be on public display for the first time.
The restoration laboratories of the MARQ and the Museum of La Vila Joiosa have restored some of the outstanding pieces that have been considered to be of greatest interest, such as a Roman child burial from La Creueta or the Roman mural painting of the egret and the lizard, among others. This will be the first time they will be exhibited to the public.
La Vila Joiosa: Archaeology and Museum" will have two clear protagonists: the Phoenician-Punic necklace from Poble Nou, with 32 gold beads, which recently travelled to Paris at the request of the Louvre Museum, for the exhibition "La Vila Joiosa: Archaeology and Museum". The "Méditerranée des Phéniciens" (The Mediterranean of the Phoenicians); and another unique piece in the Peninsula, the table with the inscription of the meat market of the Roman city that next Tuesday (22nd November) will be transferred, through a complex process, from La Vila to the MARQ.
The exhibition reviews the management of the city's monumental heritage, testimony to its key role in the history of the province, where the remains of Allon, the fourth Roman city in the province of Alicante, whose territorium was the Marina Baixa region and which was based on an important Iberian city, which maintained close contacts with Phoenicians and Greeks, can be found.
La Vila was later the port of the region in the late Middle Ages, when the fleets from Flanders called here; royal villa from 1443; royal shipyards in the golden age of the Kingdom of Valencia, the 15th century; capital of the anti-corporate defence district between the 16th and 18th centuries; the second largest naval registry in Spain around 1860-70, with more than 500 ships on the route of the colonies of the Marina Baixa. XV; capital of the requirement or anti-corsair defence district of the Marina Baixa between the XVI and XVIII centuries; second naval registry of Spain around 1860-70, with more than 500 ships that made the route to the colonies of America and the Philippines; and in 1911, King Alfonso XIII granted it the title of city, a privilege that few towns in the province possess.
The exhibition is also dedicated to presenting this heritage and the work that the City Council, through the Municipal Section of Archaeology, Ethnography and Museums, has been carrying out for decades for its conservation, research and enhancement.
This is not the first occasion on which the technical team of the MARQ and the Museum of La Vila have collaborated; they have already collaborated on the European project ANSER (Ancient Mediterranean Sea Routes) and on the exhibition "Graffiti: Spontaneous Art in Alicante" at the Casa Museo La Barbera dels Aragonés.
