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The Castle of Santa Bárbara hosts "Guardians of Stone. The castles of Alicante", an exhibition organised by the MARQ that pays tribute to the 230 castles built throughout the province with the aim of disseminating Alicante's rich heritage.
The exhibition, which covers a total of 84 fortifications by region, will be inaugurated next Friday in the Taberna room of the Castle of Santa Bárbara, the first castle to host the exhibition after visiting 14 towns in the province. The Alicante fortress thus closes this travelling exhibition that opened at the MARQ in 2015 and can be visited until 13 October.
The 84 selected castles, which are explained on exhibition panels, are grouped into five routes, coinciding with the regions of Alicante:
- La Clau del Regne, in l'Alacanti. One of the strongest bastions of the kingdom of Aragon and its main entrance to control possible Castilian offensives by land or sea in the 14th century.
- The castles of the inland border, centred on the Vinalopó Valley. A border line where the crowns of Aragon and Castile had multiple fortifications such as the castles of Sax, Villena and Biar.
- The Mountain Castles, representing the regions of L'Alcoià-Comtat. These were places of great fortified residences of the feudal lords of the regions located in the central area of the Kingdom of Valencia.
- The Castles of Tudmir, which refer to the existing fortifications in the Vega Baja. In this region we find the fortifications of Orihuela, Callosa del Segura and Cox, among others.
- The castles of the Border of Fear, which focuses on the defences of the Alicante Marinas. This route runs along the walls of towns such as La Vila, Benidorm and Altea..
The exhibition will also include Almiserat, an audiovisual piece produced by the Image Workshop of the Diputación de Alicante, which includes various aerial views of the province's castles accompanied by a voice-over explanation.
In charge of the exhibition's museography is the architect Ángel Rocamora, winner of the Emporia de Oro award for the best travelling exhibition in Spain in 2015 and responsible for the museography of exhibitions such as the Xi'An warriors at the MARQ.
"Guardians of Stone. The castles of Alicante". is carried out thanks to the collaboration of Alicante City Council, the Fundación de la Comunitat Valenciana MARQ and Esatur XXI, with the added objective of generating a tourist corridor between the Castle of Santa Barbara and the MARQ. A union that begins with this exhibition and that is expected to develop future collaborations in the future.
