There are cities in Spain with a kind of magnet for foreign people. A magnet generated by their fame, product of their world reputation and a great marketing strategy perhaps, that create on you the need to tell you have been there.
Nevertheless, there are amazing cities, secret treasures well worth to visit that don´t get the attention they truly deserve.
Vitoria is a nice, beautiful place that’s worth the time you need to walk around its streets. It counts with great promenades, an interesting old town, the great Basque cuisine to delight all tastes, two cathedrals (an old and a new one) and a great offer of public museums.
At the beginning of January, we went to the Fine Arts Museum of this lovely city and we had a morning full of fun, not only in the museum but along our way as well: the road to the museum is through a great park surrounded by beautiful houses with rich ornaments, like one known as “Casa de las Jaquecas“ which translates to “the House of Migraines” due to the body expression of the sculptures that decorate its facade.
Once in the Museum, we had the opportunity to appreciate its interesting permanent collection, with paintings by Dario de Regoyos, Antonio Maria de Lecuona, Zuloaga, Madrazo, among many others, and an area dedicated to Fernando Amarica.
What makes this place even more interesting, is that the museum itself, is a stunning building. “…A grand residence commissioned by husband and wife Ricardo Augustin and Elvira Zulueta, and designed by the architects Javier Luque and Julian Apraiz in 1912 and finished at 1916“as it’s explained on the Museum´s brochure. It is a sumptuous and elegant construction in a historicist style with many details to be appreciated. If you want to know more about the museum, click on this link
Our visit to the Museum this time was focused on the house and the historicist style. Everybody enjoyed exploring the rooms, contemplating the chapel and got stunned by the beauty of the fine joinery all around the rooms, on ceilings and floors, that can´t stop calling for your attention.
Then, in order to make our visit more dynamic, we formed groups of three or four people, each group had to select two paintings from all the collection and afterwards, explain to the other groups the reasons of their choice
After we were done with our visit, we went to eat some “pinchos” or “tapas” and later we visited the great new cathedral, an impressive example of Neo Gothic construction that just like the museum, emphasized the protagonist role of historicist architecture in this trip.
During this year, at Patrimonio para Jovenes, we will be talking again about historicist style, an architectonic style loved by some people, and very despised by others. Feel free to choose by yourself, but in the meantime, don’t forget to visit Vitoria!