A set of 311 catalogue cards were found in the archive of the National Archaeological Museum, pertaining to silver objects featured in the Exhibition of Liturgical Vestments and Precious Metalwork organised by the Office for the Defence of National Artistic Heritage in 1941. The cards are now available for consultation, along with the exhibition guide prepared by Joaquín María Navascués, Inspector-General of Museums, and the curators Emilio Camps Cazorla and Felipa Niño Más, among others.
The National Archaeological Museum has made headlines since it first opened. The press catalogue contains more than 1,150 entries from 1869 to 1934, making it possible to consult these records and discover the history of our museum from the perspective of different journalistic publications, including La Época, La Correspondencia, La Esfera, El Imparcial, Las Ocurrencias and El Heraldo de Madrid.
The National Archaeological Museum owns one of the finest collections of Greek vases in the world. It consists of nearly two thousand vessels, some of them pieces of extraordinary quality and cultural and artistic importance, ranging from the eighth to the third century BC. We selected the thirty best pieces from the collection to be rendered as 3D models. This project was made possible by a partnership between the MAN and the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Art, via its Digital Humanities Library, which created the virtual renderings of the pieces. Today these models are available to the public online and on an interactive screen in the Greece gallery.
This catalogue contains a series of albumen prints that were brought to the National Archaeological Museum in 1892 to be displayed in the European History Exhibition, organised to mark the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America, and later donated by their exhibitor, the Bey of Tunis.
These photographs, taken during the mid-to-late 19th century, show different aspects of Tunisia in those days, from archaeological ruins and monuments to cityscapes and religious, civil or military monuments, many of which have since been altered or vanished
Portraits were an essential part of Roman culture and one of its greatest contributions to art. The portrait was the image of power, of those who decided the fate of the empire, but it also showed the human side of its inhabitants, the citizens. Portraiture spread to every Roman province and represented all social classes, from patricians and senators to freedmen and lowly provincial magistrates.
This catalogue presents a collection of 1,250 postcards and a journal narrating the educational trip to Italy and France taken in 1930 by Emilio Camps Cazorla, curator of the National Archaeological Museum. The postcards were purchased during the trip; the photographs, taken by Camps Cazorla himself, were either developed as postcards or inserted into his journal, which also includes a collection of drawings and handwritten texts. This provides an exceptional, unpublished document that brings us closer to the historical, political, social and cultural context of the period.
The National Archaeological Museum holds the personal archive of the Belgian archaeologist Louis Siret, considered one of the most important documentary collections for the study of Palaeolithic, Neolithic, Chalcolithic and Bronze Age sites in the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula. The constant, precise work carried out by Louis Siret alongside his brother Henri and the site foreman Pedro Flores is reflected in this documentation, which occupies more than 70 archival boxes and 18 folders. These were digitised and catalogued from the museum's archives between 2006 and 2014.
This catalogue shows the photographs, field notebooks and drawings from the MAN's Siret and Martínez Santa-Olalla collections relating to the Argaric site of La Bastida (Totana, Murcia), excavated in 1886 by Siret and in successive campaigns between 1944 and 1950 under the direction of Martínez Santa-Olalla.It also presents the documentary collections related to the Chalcolithic site of Campico de Lébor, also located in the Murcian municipality of Totana, excavated by the same team as La Bastida during the 1944 campaign.
This is a collection of plates from the Museo Español de Antigüedades (Spanish Museum of Antiquities), a leading 19th-century magazine that published images of pieces added to the collections of the MAN. Throughout its history, the Museum has seen its vision and contents evolve, and the objects that made up its ethnographic section today form part of the collections of more specialised museums. This catalogue therefore offers a different perspective on the National Archaeological Museum, when archaeology, art and ethnography had a place in a more general institution.
To commemorate the renovation and subsequent closure of the MAN, between 2008 and 2011, the exhibition Treasures of the MAN was held there. Located in the old rooms of the Museum, remodelled with a new museum design, this exhibition displayed more than 300 pieces of great historical and cultural value. Its aim was to continue to offer visitors the ability to learn about the most significant works in the Museum’s collections and to attend cultural activities related to them. This catalogue contains a selection of pieces from the exhibition, grouped by cultural period.
Comprising nearly 7,000 pieces, the coins issued in the Americas form part of one of the largest collections held in the museum’s Coin Cabinet. This catalogue begins with the series struck during the colonial period, which were progressively joined by national issues as the different countries gained independence.
The National Archaeological Museum holds the most significant collection of Hispanic coins in the world. It comprises nearly 16,000 coins minted on the Iberian Peninsula in classical times. This catalogue, part of the international series Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum (SNG), is made up of more than 3500 online references about coins in Hispano-Carthaginian, Phoenician-Punic and indigenous script minted in the south, complemented by downloadable documents organised by cultural series and the mints that issued them. These documents come from the printed catalogues published to date, to which an addendum has been added with the new additions to the Museum's collection.
The National Archaeological Museum's collection of Andalusian coins, which contains nearly 17,000 pieces, is the most significant of its kind in the world. To date, this catalogue brings together the 502 coins belonging to the exceptional collection of Hispano-Muslim coins that the Museum acquired in 1895 from Antonio Vives y Escudero.