In November 1934, soon to be 90 years old, the archaeologist from Badalona Joaquim Font i Cussó, during the excavations carried out in the lower part of the so-called Clos de la Torre, around the current square of the Assembly of Catalonia, found a street where a sculpture of a Venus appeared. This sculpture became, from that moment until today, an emblematic and representative piece of the city. It was exhibited in the museum of the Grup Excursionista de Badalona until the Spanish Civil War. Once this conflict ended, in 1940, both the Venus and all the pieces that were part of that museum were looted and transferred to the Museo Arqueológico Provincial de Barcelona (current Museu d’Arqueologia de Catalunya), from where the Venus would not return until 1980.

In recent years, the Museum, together with the Archaeological Studies Unit of the Institut Català d’Arqueologia Clàssica (ICAC), has carried out a typological review of this small sculpture from the 1st century AD and, in line with the latest trends in archaeological research, an archeometric study of the material with which it was made has been carried out. This research allows the marble to be characterized through the application of various techniques, mainly petrographic analysis, cathodoluminescence analysis and mass spectrometry analysis.

The results of these joint studies will be presented, for the first time, in this conference which will be in charge of Marie-Claire Savin, Esther Gurri, Andrea Collado and Anna Gutiérrez.