King Felipe VI opens the Museo Íbero designed by EDDEA, home to the world’s largest collection on Iberian culture

King Felipe VI has opened the new Museo Íbero in Jaén, which houses the world’s largest collection devoted to Iberian culture, with more than 3,500 pieces, 40% of them never before exhibited. Located on the Paseo de la Estación in Jaén and built on the remains of the former provincial prison, the building designed by EDDEA’s team of architects and its comprehensive exhibition have aroused great interest.

With a built area of 11,152 square metres, its galleries offer a broad view of six centuries of Iberian culture, which stretched from the Guadalquivir to the south of France between the sixth century BC and Roman rule. The core of its collection will be formed by the holdings of the Museo Provincial de Jaén, although it will also include pieces from museums in the surrounding area.

The new museum opens with the temporary exhibition ‘La Dama, El Príncipe, El Héroe y La Diosa’ (The Lady, the Prince, the Hero and the Goddess), which takes visitors through the settings of four figures who represent, in the Iberian world, the mythological characters of the Piquía kraters. Its aim is to show how Iberian political power was supported and legitimised through religious and heroic symbolism.

After the opening ceremony, the King toured the building accompanied by the Minister of Finance, Cristóbal Montoro; the President of the Junta de Andalucía, Susana Díaz; the regional ministers for Culture, Miguel Ángel Vázquez, and for Development and Housing, Felipe López; and the Mayor of Jaén, Francisco Javier Márquez, among other authorities, as well as a delegation from the EDDEA team.

A unique museum

The President of the Junta stressed how “long desired and awaited” the project had been and said that the new space will be “an opportunity for Jaén, but also for the whole of Andalusia”, since “it will be the only museum of its kind anywhere in our country” and “through 11,000 square metres it will bring us closer to what the Iberian world meant in Andalusia”.

She also referred to the site on which it has been built and the transformation of the place, a former prison with a tragic history, “where we can also recover the historical memory of what that difficult and dark period, the period of the dictatorship, meant for a land like Jaén”, she said.