Archaeological Museum of Badajoz

The Archaeological Museum of Badajoz, formally known as the Provincial Archaeological Museum of Badajoz (Spanish: Museo Arqueológico Provincial de Badajoz), is an archaeology museum located in Badajoz, Extremadura, Spain. Owned by the Spanish State with management transferred to the Junta of Extremadura, the museum holds particular significance for its extensive collection of Final Bronze Age warrior steles, comprising approximately one quarter of all such finds in the Iberian Peninsula. Its collections trace human settlement in the middle Guadiana valley from prehistory through the Christian Middle Ages.

The museum's origins trace to 1844, when an unrealized project for a museum was first proposed. The institution was formally created in 1867 as a re-foundation of the Comisión Provincial de Monumentos, part of a broader wave of Spanish provincial museum establishments. However, it did not assume its true form until 1869, when it received significant artifacts from excavations at Los Cercos. Before this acquisition, the modest collection had been displayed in the plenary hall of the provincial deputation. In 1938, during the Spanish Civil War, ownership passed from the provincial deputation to the central State's directorate of museums, and the collections were moved to the building known as La Galera, adjacent to the Torre de Espantaperros. The museum relocated to its current premises in 1989, the same year that an agreement between the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport and the Junta of Extremadura transferred management of the institution to the autonomous community while preserving State ownership.

The museum's holdings are organized chronologically according to the cultures that settled in the middle Guadiana valley near Badajoz. The permanent exhibition is arranged for visitors to proceed from the upper floor downward. The upper floors contain prehistoric materials: Lower and Middle Paleolithic, Chalcolithic, Orientalizing period, Warrior Steles, Bronze Age, and Iron Age. The first floor displays Roman period remains from the province of Badajoz, covering agriculture, mining, beliefs, and funerary practices, serving as a complement to the National Museum of Roman Art in Mérida. The ground floor presents late Roman pieces, early Christianity, Visigothic culture and architecture of the sixth and seventh centuries, Islamic period Badajoz from the ninth to thirteenth centuries, and the Christian Medieval phase from the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries. The museum also holds a significant collection of tiles from Badajoz, Toledo, Medellín, Zalamea de la Serena, Cumbres Mayores, Granada, and Calera de León.

The museum's most distinctive holdings are its warrior steles from the Final Bronze Age, which represent about one quarter of all such steles discovered in the Iberian Peninsula. This concentration makes the collection a site of major importance for the study of Bronze Age Iberian warrior iconography and funerary practices. The tile collection, drawn from multiple Spanish centers beyond Badajoz itself, documents regional ceramic traditions from the fifteenth through nineteenth centuries.

The museum occupies the Palacio de los Condes de la Roca y Duques de Feria, sometimes abbreviated as the Palacio de los Duques de la Roca, a title that does not actually exist as a noble designation. The building sits within the walled enclosure of the Alcazaba of Badajoz, at the highest point of the city. Constructed in the sixteenth century by the Suárez de Figueroa family, another Extremaduran noble house, the palace follows the typical fortress-palace structure with a large central courtyard. It retains some Mudéjar elements, including esgrafiado drawings in lime plaster on horseshoe arches and alfiz moldings. The building served as part of the San José barracks in the eighteenth century and lay largely in ruins after the Peninsular War until restoration began in 1970. The restoration preserved the original facade, the northwest tower, and some small interior elements.

The Archaeological Museum of Badajoz is located in the Palacio de los Condes de la Roca within the Alcazaba of Badajoz, at the highest point of the city. The museum is owned by the Spanish State and managed by the Junta of Extremadura. Its website is http://museoarqueologicobadajoz.juntaex.es. The chronological arrangement of exhibitions, designed to be visited from upper floors to ground floor, presents a comprehensive overview of Badajoz archaeology from prehistory through the sixteenth century.