Here you can download the Museum’s activities calendar in which you will find our proposals for the coming months.
For further information, you can call 933 841 750 or email info@museudebadalona.cat
During the Christmas holidays, the Museum will be closed on Friday 22th (afternoon), Monday 25th, Tuesday 26th, Friday 29th December (afternoon), Monday 1st, Friday 5th in the afternoon and Saturday 6th January, all day.
The Christmas holidays will also affect the opening hours of the City Historical Archive, which will be closed the week of December 25th to 31st.
Last month, Mr. Miquel Domingo López gave a total of 11 stereoscopic photographic plates to the Image Archive of the Museum of Badalona. The photographs had been made by his father, and included several views of the city and its surroundings.
Once digitized, we found this one which offers a not well-known view of what is currently Plaça de la Plana.
This is a photograph of which we cannot specify the date, but it is before 1930.
The house in the center of the image is Cal Corp, the farmhouse that was in the area of the current Plaça de la Plana. This house is reached by a raised construction pipe supported by pylons which was the channel through which water arrived from the Besòs river and traced the course of the mine. It was known that there was such a construction but we had no graphic record of it.
In the background, on the right, you can identify the flats of “la llum”, the housing block that still exists, located on the corner of Avinguda de Martí Pujol and Carrer d’Ignasi Iglésias.
Last November 24th, the communicologist and designer from Badalona Joan Costa Solà-Segalés (1926-2022) died. Considered one of the world’s leading researchers in communication, signaling, schematics and scientigraphy, alongside personalities such as Gillo Dorfles, Angelo Schwartz, Vilém Flusser, Umberto Eco, Luc Janizevski, Elisabeth Rohmer, Victor Schwach or Abraham Moles, Costa Solà-Segalés also had a brief career as an artist in his youth.
Formed at the Llotja, Costa Solà-Segalés was mainly influenced by Impressionist painting. He exhibited in Barcelona (Saló de Tardor), Badalona and Sant Adrià de Besòs, and was awarded in Sant Adrià and Badalona. He worked mostly in pencil portraiture and painting but, ultimately, it would be in the field of design and communication where he would succeed. He was a professor at the Visual School of the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and is the author of more than twenty books and hundreds of articles on communication, sociology of the image and design.
Two works from that first period in which he became interested in painting and drawing are preserved in the collections of our Museum. The first is the portrait of a cousin of the author, Rosa Motino Solà-Segalés, who was 17 years old at the time. This work, an oil painting, was presented at the local exhibition of Fine Arts in Badalona in 1947 and was awarded the first prize in the category of local authors. In 2020 it was included in the Portraits exhibition that could be seen at the Museum in the spring and summer of that year, right after the months of confinement. The second work, titled Descans, was acquired for 2,000 pesetas by the Badalona City Council, after it was part of the Local Exhibition of Fine Arts in 1951 and was awarded one of the special prizes. Years later, the work would enter the Museum’s Art Fund.
You can now purchase the 2023 calendar of old photographs of the city of Badalona, published by Efadós, in the Museum shop.
The edition, in which the Museum collaborates, brings together some of the images collected on the occasion of the publication of the book L’Abans de Badalona. Recull gràfic 1888-1965, as well as different photographs from the Museum’s Image Archive.
The price of the calendar is €10.90
Today, Thursday, November 24th, the Spanish School of History and Archeology in Rome-CSIC presents the publication Ciudades Romanas de Hispania, published in two volumes by the publishing house Erma di Bretschneider, in its collection of Ancient History, Series archaeological
The work, edited by Trinidad Nogales Basarrate, includes a chapter dedicated to the Roman city of Baetulo.
This publication represents the culmination of the “Ciudades Romanas de Hispania” project which was born with the aim of collecting updated information on 63 Roman cities of the Iberian Peninsula, chosen from the Roman provinces of Tarraconensis, Baetica and Lusitania. As part of the project, a series of international conferences dedicated to these cities have taken place for two years (2020-2022) which have been given by the Research Department of the Museo Nacional de Arte Romano de Mérida and which can be retrieved at through the youtube channel of this institution.
Last Thursday, November 10th, the Museum hosted the donation ceremony for the photograph collection of the photographer Josep M. Bendicho Esteban (1969-2016).
The event, which was attended by the Vice President of the Museum, Anna M. Lara, included the intervention of Ceci Fímia, photographer and friend of Josep M. Bendicho who has classified his photographs, and Josep M.’s niece. , the writer Núria Bendicho.
Josep M. Bendicho’s hobby started when he was only 17 years old and still a teenager. Later he started doing occasional jobs as a photographer for a magazine specializing in travel, and as a location searcher for advertisements and films, as was the case with Biutiful (2010), by Alejandro González Iñárritu.
In 2000, he gained considerable notoriety with the publication of an article in La Vanguardia about the brutality against Muslims in the town of El Ejido (Almeria).
He also worked as a film director. His first work was the short film Intensitat (2011), which he also wrote and produced. His first feature film, which he co-directed with Carlos Clausell, was Bictor Ugo (2015) and premiered at the Morelia International Film Festival (Mexico).
The Museum periodically incorporates numerous donations from people, entities and institutions linked to Badalona into its collections. The objects and documents are registered, classified and documented according to their nature and characteristics, and are placed in the Museum’s reserve rooms, where they are kept in the appropriate conditions for their conservation. They can also be integrated into the Museum’s permanent exhibitions or temporary exhibitions.
We want to show our gratitude to all the people who have put their trust in us for their invaluable contribution and to help us grow the Museum of all.
Donations of pieces and photographs from the year 2022
Assoc Veïns del Centre, set of photographs of activities of the neighborhood association over several years; Dolors Ballester, several pieces of clothing for men and women made in Badalona; Mercè Clapés Mongay, girl’s dresses and bridesmaid’s dress from the 1968 Floral Games and wedding dress made by Badalona dressmaker Maryse from 1960; Carme Clarós Sanchez, two sets of cocktail dresses and three women’s dresses made by the Badalona dressmaker, Pedro Rovira; Rosa Colomé, two oil paintings by Martí Pujol and Concepcion Caritg; José Francisco Carrasco, set of photographs from the seventies; Gemma Dorado Platero, silver wedding reminder of Ramon Barriga and Dolors Remisa; David Ferrés Campí, digital photographs of the column with the Sagrat Cor de la Vall de Pomar; Josep Maria and Maria Rosa Fulquet Vidal, oil painting by Antoni Ros Güell; Martín Gallego, copies of the book Dragonflies Walk as well as the photographic and production material that make it up; Josep Guinot Mauchan, photographs and documents La Productora de Bòrax SA and different chemical articles; Albert Ibáñez, digital copy of photographs of the theater group S’estira i S’arronsa (seventies); Sebastià Lladó, deposit transfer of two model boats; Francesca Niubó, set of photographs (mainly Institut Albéniz); Josep Pujals Llopart work clothes from Montalifita SA; REBASA, medalist of Deutsch and Cia.; Gerard Remendo, copy of several photographs of city spaces at the end of the 20th century; Teresa Sàbat del Riu, greeting card from Badalona by Pedro Rovira; Josep M. Sabater and Coloma Lleal, donation of several photographs and negatives, and a figure of a wooden Virgin; Edelmir Sancho, copy of several photographs of activities of the Aspirantat de Santa Maria; Jaume Solà Campmany, various photographic material (negatives, photographs on paper, slides), 1980s; Glòria Vicens Hernández, three women’s dresses by Pedro Rovira; Josep Vidal Gombau, handmade crochet bedspread by Madrona Gombau.
Now that the celebrations of All Saints’ Day and Day of the Dead (November 2ND) are approaching, we want to share with you some curiosities about the epitaphs with which the ancient Romans marked the graves of their loved ones.
Sit Tibi Terra Levis (STTL), “may the earth be light on you”, is undoubtedly one of the most popular Latin expressions. We find it documented in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, replacing an earlier formula: Hic situs or Sita est (HSE), “here he or she rests”. Of this last inscription, not so well known, we have precisely a witness in the Museum where you can see on display a fragment of a tombstone from the Republican era that was found in a fill, during the connection works that were carried out in the Roman Baths-Decumanus space, in 2008.
Tombstone fragment with incomplete inscription. Last quarter of the first century BC (MB 13290). Museum of Badalona
This expression, however, is not as well-known as the one that replaced it, the popular Sit Tibi Terra Levis, which some people still use today. The meaning of the expression shows the hope of those who remain that the deceased will not be long in the grave, bearing the weight of the earth, before passing on to a better life, in the case of the Roman world, in the underworld.
The first to use this phrase were the Greeks, since its origin can be found in the play Alcestes (438 BC) by the great Greek tragic poet Euripides. The sentence made a fortune and, with variations, was repeated by several classical authors, both Greek and Latin. This is how we see it in a poem by Marcial (Epigrams, 9.29) where in the last verse it is said: “May the earth be light on you and may a soft sand cover you, lest the dogs could not dig up the bones”.
Roman funerary inscription with the inscription Sit Tibi Terra Levis. National Museum of Roman Art. Merida
We find several versions of this epitaph such as: S·E·T·L, may the earth be light on him; or T·L·S, abbreviated, that the earth be light. As a curiosity, a different expression is documented much more frequently in Roman Africa, the meaning of which is very similar to the epitaph that would end up being adapted by the Christian world. It is the abbreviation OTBQ (Ossa Tibi Bene Quiescant), which could be translated as “may your bones rest well”.
In the 4th century AD is when the Christian locution R.I.P. (Requiescat In Pace) which remembers that sentence, begins to appear. In the 5th century AD, the habit of placing epitaphs completely disappeared, but it began to recover from the s. XVIII, when so much is used in the Latin version R.I.P. as in Catalan or Castilian D.E.P. (Rest in peace).
Detail of the burial of a 25-year-old woman. S. I AD Exhibition “Baetulo, Roman city”. Museum of Badalona
Whole burial of the woman, with the skeletal remains of an infant. S. I AD Museum of Badalona
Tomorrow, Wednesday, October 19th, the Museum hosts the III Colloquium of Roman Archeology dedicated to Wine in Antiquity begins and will last until Friday, October 21st.
The meeting, which will bring together a hundred specialists from Spain, France, Italy or Portugal, will allow us to know about the latest developments and exchange methods, experiences and perspectives on the exciting world of wine in the Roman era.
The Congress is organized with the collaboration of the University of Barcelona, the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, the Catalan Institute of Classical Archeology (ICAC), the Museum of Archeology of Catalonia, the Institute of Catalan Studies and Wine tourism DO Alella and is intended for archeology professionals. Once finished, however, we will explained you the main Badalonian contributions that derive from the colloquium in a conference of the cycle Archaeological Novelties.
