Ars Mechanicae. Medieval Engineering in Spain

Exhibitions Ars Mechanicae

The exhibition “Ars Mechanicae”, organised by the Centre for Historic Studies on Public Works and Urban Planning (CEHOPU) in conjunction with Fundación Juanelo Turriano, was open to the public from 17 October 2008 to 7 January 2009 at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Madrid, where it received over 52 000 visitors.

The exhibition aimed to provide an overview of Medieval technology in use in the kingdoms established on the Iberian Peninsula, focusing on public works: roads and bridges, irrigation and water supply, ports and lighthouses, castles and fortresses. Also on display was a wide variety of industry-related arts (parchment making, glass blowing, coin minting) and a host of devices and machines: the fulling mills that transformed the art of weaving wool, the hydraulic drop hammers used to shape iron, the earliest tide and wind mills, the introduction of gun powder...

Copies of the catalogue (in Spanish) can still be obtained at Fundación Juanelo Turriano.

A travelling version of the exhibition organised under an agreement signed in 2012 with the Centre for Public Works Studies and Experimentation (CEDEX) was shown in the Science Museum at Logroño in the spring of 2013.

Technical data

• Curator: Ignacio González Tascón; Pedro Navascués Palacio
• Coordinator: Marta Grau Fernández; Dolores Romero Muñoz (travelling exhibitions)
• Editing director and designer: Bernardo Revuelta Pol

More information

Image slideshow

Read online catalogue (In Spanish)

Venues

Logroño. Science Museum
7 March - 23 June 2013

Tarragona. Centre d’Estudis Maritims i de Activitats.
4 July - 15 September 2013.

Murcia. Museo de la Ciencia y el Agua.
27 September - 2 March 2014.

Valladolid. Museo de la Ciencia
11 April - 16 November 2014

Segovia. Real Casa de Moneda
6 March - 7 June 2015

Gordoncillo (León). MIHACALE. Museo de la Industria Harinera de Castilla y León
22 June - 25 February 2017

Vila-Real. Salón Social de la Comunidad de Regantes.
2 December - 10 February 2023


See bibliographic information

Read catalogue (In Spanish)

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