Museu del Càntir

A whole museum dedicated to the Catalan ceramic water jug

The Museu del Càntir is unique in Europe: a museum devoted entirely to the càntir, the spouted ceramic jug used for centuries to carry and cool drinking water across the Mediterranean. The collection was assembled by local enthusiast Jaume Clavell from the 1950s onward, opened to the public in 1975, and moved to a purpose-built modern building on the central square in 2000.

Inside, more than 1,200 jugs are on display at any one time, ranging from medieval Catalan pieces to Mexican Talavera, Peruvian black-clay, Greek askoi, and Picasso ceramics from his Vallauris workshop. The temporary exhibition space hosts contemporary ceramicists, and the museum doubles as the home of Argentona's annual ceramics fair on 4 August — one of the oldest in Catalonia.

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A story
Argentona has held a ceramics fair every 4 August — the feast of Saint Domènec — since the early 19th century, when locals came up from Barcelona and Mataró to fill their càntirs at the cold-water Font Picant spring. The collection that grew out of those fairs is now a museum of more than 3,500 jugs from across the Mediterranean and Latin America, including pieces designed by Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí.