13 April 2011

Course 

THE CATHEDRAL OF PAMPLONA. A VIEW FROM THE 21ST CENTURY

Diocesan Museum: yesterday and today

D. Emilio Quintanilla Martínez (Chair de Patrimonio y Arte Navarro)
and Mr. Francisco Javier Aizpún (Archbishopric of Pamplona)

Although some attempts to create museum spaces in the cathedral of Pamplona could be guessed, the first attempt in this sense, and as we understand a museum today, dates back to 1867, when the Commission of Monuments, recently constituted, asked Bishop Úriz y Labayru to cede the refectory to install there its own headquarters and a museum of Christian antiquities. The project was not carried out, but that space was already defined as the most suitable for that purpose, as it eventually turned out to be.

During the rest of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, a difficult and often contradictory relationship developed between the ecclesiastical authorities of Navarre and the conservation of its movable heritage. Navarre experienced problems common to the rest of the Spanish ecclesiastical establishment after the disentailment, deprived of the rents that sustained it in the past, but with an enormous bequest to safeguard. Thus, during this period, we see many measures of patrimonial conservation, but at the same time, not a few disposals. For example, the cathedral of Pamplona was renovated, but at the same time part of its trousseau was disposed of, which became the main part of the Museum of Navarre.

The turning point towards a well-defined protectionist activity took place in 1960, with the foundation of the diocesan cathedral museum, under the direction of Don Juan Ollo and Don Jesús Mª Omeñaca from 1975, occupying the refectory and part of the courtyard of the Romanesque palace. The collection was formed following the criterion of including the outstanding pieces of the cathedral treasure (in which the goldsmith pieces stand out), and others from the rest of the diocese, especially those that were less safe in their places of origin.

The current distribution and exhibition layout of the museum is due to the use of two exhibitions. On the one hand, the exhibition entitled Salve, 700 years of Marian devotion in Navarre, held between 1994 and 1995, for which the cillería was fitted out as a museum space and the walls of the refectory were paneled, and the exhibition organized for the 8th centenary of the music chapel, after which the lower dormitory of the canons was incorporated.
This museum is currently the most visited museum in Navarra.

Francisco Javier Aizpún, Delegate of Patrimony of the Archbishopric of Pamplona, explained the existing projects for the creation of the new diocesan cathedral museum.