Museo de Ávila

The provincial archaeology and history museum, housed in a Renaissance palace

The Museo de Ávila occupies the Casa de los Deanes, a fine Renaissance palace with a two-storey arcaded courtyard near the cathedral. The museum covers the archaeology and history of the province, with collections running from prehistoric artefacts through Roman Ávila (the city was a significant Roman settlement called Abula), medieval metalwork, and religious art. The Roman section is particularly worth seeing: the area around Ávila produced a large number of pre-Roman stone figures called verracos — granite carvings of bulls and boars used as territorial markers — and several good examples are in the collection.

The palace courtyard is free to enter and worth a look even if you skip the interior galleries. The museum admission is very cheap and the building is calm and uncrowded. It is a five-minute walk from the cathedral and the main wall gates.

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The museum's main building is the Casa de los Deanes — the House of the Deans — a two-storey Renaissance palace built for the cathedral chapter in the early 16th century. The deans of Ávila Cathedral lived here for centuries. The building wraps around a handsome arcaded courtyard with paired columns and carved capitals; in any other city it would be a major attraction in itself. In Ávila, overshadowed by the walls and the cathedral, it goes relatively unvisited — which means the archaeology rooms are usually empty.

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