Muséu del Pueblu d'Asturies

In addition to the merely curious or nostalgic concern of its visitors, this center guarantees the study and development of historiographical works. Custody over 12.000 documents cataloged and distributed in different funds, such as the background of personal and family documents composed of archives of nobles, bourgeois and peasant houses, as well as diaries, memories and family correspondence; or the fund of companies, businesses and professionals, or the extensive graphic archive that ranges from furniture designs to calendars and almanacs, through posters, sticker albums, cards, cooking recipes, notarial deeds, testaments or school materials. It is also part of the museum the Archive of the Oral Tradition that has a fund of 20.000 ethno-texts as well as with a photo library that houses around half a million old photographs. The importance of its collections is such The Muséu del Pueblu d'Asturies heads and acts as coordinator of the complex Network of Ethnographic Museums of Asturias, integrated by fourteen more centers; ensuring that the distinctive collections of this Network work as one and avoiding excessive repetitions of materials.

The facilities of the Museum do not lag behind its archive, it occupies an enclosure of almost 35.000 square meters for the most part outdoors. The central building It was the Asturias pavilion at the 1992 Universal Exposition in Seville, moved to the museum in 1994, and it houses the reception, exhibition halls, auditorium and audiovisual projections. The museum as a whole is located next to the fair of the Trade Fair.

An Asturian village

The original idea to organize this great space was to create an Asturian town in situ, giving it all the typical elements of the region. The first constructions that moved here were a set of granaries and bread boxes from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. 1970 and 1975 also moved two characteristic buildings of the Asturian noble architecture: the house of the Valdés, of the seventeenth century (now the seat of the Gaita Museum), and the house of the González de la Vega (now the headquarters of the Gaita Museum), of 1757. In addition, a peasant house, two tendejones where a mallet was exposed to work the iron, a cider press and a bowling for quartered In the year 2000 the house of the Valdés family was enlarged to be used for Photo Library of Asturias; a new space of rural constructions and three pavilions is finished to exhibit agricultural implements. In 2007 it gets up the tendayu: four hundred square meters destined to the celebration of concerts and festive events. In 2011, the development of the museum continues with the construction of a polyvalent administrative building, with workspaces, storage and consultation. The natural environment is what really integrates and gives harmony to all these disparate properties, with forest of native trees included and a brackish water pond, the only rest of the marsh landscape that dominated this area of ​​Gijón.

Suffice as an example of meticulous development of this space, the fact that in the peasant house the decision was made not to place electric light, only candlelight and oil lamps. The lit llar provides the essential smoke to know what the living conditions were like towards 1880 in a house that lacked a chimney.

Near 10.000 thousand traditional objects adorns this rich heritage and complements it increasingly: domestic furnishings, furniture, cavalry gear, farming tools, obsolete parts of the Asturian industry, pre-industrial means of transport (plows, sechorios, cambiallas, mesories to collect the spelled, sickles, manales, cars of the country and narrias, old measures), and a long etcetera.

In recent decades, the museum has considerably increased its collections and has led various research and published numerous publications. One of his most frequent tasks is to organize Temporary exhibitions (more than thirty produced by the museum itself and its funds) and training days related to their fields of study. At present he has signed several research agreements with universities and private foundations in order to promote the study of anthropology and social history in Asturias.

Opening hours Muséu del Pueblu d'Asturies

From October to March
· From Tuesday to Friday: 9.30-18.30.
· Saturday, Sunday and holidays: 10.00-18.30.

From April to September
· From Tuesday to Friday: 10.00-19.00.
· Saturday, Sunday and holidays: 10.30-19.00.

Closing days
· Monday, December 24, 25 and 31, January 1 and 6, and Shrove Tuesday.

Source: Muséu del Pueblu d'Asturies.