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The Archaeological Museum of the Diputación de Alicante (Alicante Provincial Council) inaugurated this morning the exhibition The Knight of Ifach. The decline of the medieval city'.The wall fragment reveals important facts about the history and society that inhabited the 14th century in the area now occupied by the Calpe archaeological site.
The Vice-President and Member of Parliament for Culture, Julia ParraHe pointed out that "it is one of the most important pieces discovered by the MARQ team in the excavations begun on the Peñón de Ifach more than 16 years ago, and it is worthwhile for all Alicante residents, including the youngest, to get to know it through the workshops and activities programmed by the Museum's Educational Unit, especially aimed at our schoolchildren".
The curator of the exhibition, the archaeologist José Luis MenéndezHe explained that the fragment is the first representation of the human figure to appear in this enclave. "On very few occasions does an archaeological piece allow us to recover a specific historical moment as if we were taking a photograph of a landscape", he pointed out.
The research team led by Menéndez found this piece of wall in 2014 among the remains of a large building next to the access system to the medieval town called Domus Lauria. It is a caput mansum o construction destined for the accommodation and exercise of the lordly power of the representatives and members of the House of Lauria, lords of Ifach, during their stays in the territory or castrum during the first half of the 14th century.
Among the wreckage was found this piece depicting a medieval knightpainted in graphite, holding a helmet with chain mail and a shield in his left hand from which also emerges a heraldic emblem in the wind. This coat of arms corresponds to the arms of the Ampuritan branch of the Casal de Barcelona, specifically of Juan I of Aragon and Xérica, who was Count of Ampurias between 1364 and 1398, and whose troops defended Ifach and the territory of the castrum of Calp during the siege of King Pedro I of Castile in the winter of 1365 in the conflict known as the War of the Two Peters (1356-1369).
The research carried out by MARQ has been able to demonstrate all the details of this attack, which had as a consequence the decline of the medieval city and the progressive abandonment of a populationwhich ended up occupying the current enclaves of Calp, Benissa and Teulada.
