Museum of the People of Asturias Gijón

Museum of the People of Asturies on the map

See on the map Muséu del Pueblu d'Asturies

Latitude: 43.5380898 Length: -5.6391335
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Beyond simply appealing to the curious or nostalgic interests of its visitors, this center in Gijón guarantees the study and development of historiographical work. It houses more than 12.000 cataloged documents distributed across different collections, such as the personal and family records collection, comprised of archives from noble, bourgeois, and peasant households, as well as diaries, memoirs, and family correspondence; the business, commercial, and professional records collection; and the extensive graphic archive, which includes everything from furniture designs to calendars and almanacs, as well as posters, sticker albums, membership cards, recipes, notarial deeds, wills, and school materials. The museum also houses the Oral Tradition Archive , with a collection of 20.000 ethno-texts, and a photographic library containing approximately half a million vintage photographs . Such is the importance of its collections that the Muséu del Pueblu d'Asturies heads and acts as coordinator of the complex Network of Ethnographic Museums of Asturias , made up of fourteen other centers; ensuring that the distinctive collections of this Network function as one and avoid excessive repetitions of materials.

The museum's facilities are as impressive as its archive, occupying an area of almost 35.000 square meters, mostly outdoors. The central building was the Asturias Pavilion at the 1992 Seville Universal Exposition, moved to the museum in 1994, and houses the reception area, exhibition halls, auditorium, and audiovisual projection rooms. The museum as a whole is located next to the Trade Fair grounds.

El Molinón Stadium

In that area there is also El Molinón, stadium of Real Sporting de Gijón and one of the oldest active football grounds in Spain. Its origins date back to the beginning of the 20th century, when the area was nothing more than a landscape of meadows crossed by the river. The name comes from an old mill that once stood on the site, and over time, the stadium became one of the great symbols of the city and its footballing identity.
If you want to know the details Sporting's history since 1905You can see our full report.

Sporting Gijon

As their anthem states, Real Sporting de Gijón is a club with a "brilliant history." More than one hundred years… Read more

An Asturian village

The original idea for organizing this large space was to create an Asturian village on-site , complete with all the typical elements of the region. The first structures moved here were a group of hórreos (raised granaries) and paneras (bread stores) dating from the 17th to the 19th centuries. Between 1970 and 1975, two buildings characteristic of Asturian gentry architecture were also relocated : the Valdés house, from the 17th century (currently home to the Bagpipe Museum), and the González de la Vega house (also currently home to the Bagpipe Museum), dating from 1757. In addition, a peasant house and two sheds were built , displaying a hammer for ironworking, a cider press, and a bowling alley for the traditional game of cuatreada (a game similar to horseshoes). In 2000, the Valdés house was expanded to house the Asturias Photo Library ; a new area for rural buildings and three pavilions for exhibiting agricultural implements were completed. In 2007, the Tendayu was built : a 400-square-meter space dedicated to concerts and festive events. In 2011, the museum's development continued with the construction of a multipurpose administrative building, housing workspaces, storage, and research areas. The natural surroundings truly integrate and harmonize all these disparate buildings, including a grove of native trees and a brackish pond, the only remaining vestige of the marshland landscape that once dominated this area of Gijón.

As an example of the meticulous development of this space , consider the fact that the peasant house was designed without electric lighting, relying solely on candles and oil lamps. The burning hearth provides the essential smoke for understanding living conditions around 1880 in a house that lacked a chimney.

Nearly 10.000 traditional objects adorn this rich heritage and increasingly complement it: household goods, furniture, horse tack, farming implements, obsolete pieces of Asturian industry, pre-industrial means of transport (plows, sickles, sledgehammers, scythes for collecting spelt, sickles, handwheels, country carts and sleds, old measures), and a long etcetera.

In recent decades, the museum has significantly increased its collections and has supported various research projects and published numerous works. One of its most frequent activities is organizing temporary exhibitions (more than thirty produced by the museum itself using its own funds) and training workshops related to its areas of study. Currently, it has several research agreements with universities and private foundations to promote the study of anthropology and social history in Asturias.