Museo Arqueológico de Úbeda

The Museum of Úbeda was set up as a section of the Museum of Jaén by a decree in 1972 (964/1972 on 16 March) in order to " reunite, preserve and exhibit any works of artistic, archaeological and historical interest which have an educational element and exemplify the history and culture of this town".

A Mudejar house was chosen as the museum headquarters, discovered during some works in 1964. Restoration works were carried out, adapting it for the Archaeological Museum. It was inaugurated as Archaeological Museum on 18 January 1973, with Mr. Rafael Vañó Silvestre as its founder and first director, who also contributed his personal collection. Nevertheless, the archaeological objects mainly came from the Museum of Jaén.

This house is located in the former lands of San Pablo, where the fossils of the Mudejar traces of the city are preserved. It is structured into narrow streets, with fortress walls and narrow streets, distributed into irregular blocks, where we can find a large number of late Middle Age buildings, including not only palaces, but also simple dwellings.

The headquarters of the Archaeological Museum is an interesting example of Mudejar domestic architecture, from between the 14th and 15th centuries. It is organised around a central patio, with four open galleries from which the various rooms can be accessed. Currently, access is through a porch with arch which, at the start, was the gallery which led onto a yard or garden, in which the adjoining building was subsequently built. There are four arches which are wider in the middle and with detailed segments, in which some old marks from the plots can be seen, supported by eight-sided pillars with bases decorated with sphere shapes and polyedric column caps with plant decoration which brings to mind ataurique.

The patio, which has flat arches around which you can find the various halls and rooms, is also supported by these types of columns, although the column caps are different, (square blocks decorated with emblems).

The house, converted into a block of dwellings, was redesigned for the museum, preserving the structure around a patio, but also using other architectural elements from other houses in Úbeda such as the entrance facade.

The exhibition space is adapted to the characteristics of the main museum building and this extends to the three halls and the porch at the entrance, the patio, entrepatio (adjacent space to the patio) and the upper gallery.