Buy tickets
Buy ticketsEl Cau Ferrat and Maricel Museums recover their old splendor
El Cau Ferrat and Maricel Museums will reopen their doors on 22 December, after four years of a deep reform that allowed rehabilitating areas, restoring heritage elements and exhibiting valuable collections from a comprehensive museum approach. The President of the Generalitat, Artur Mas, will inaugurate the reopening at a ceremony which will be attended by a large numbers of authorities, including the President of the Council of Barcelona, Salvador Esteve; the Mayor if Sitges, Miquel Forns and the Minister of Development, Ana Pastor. The Ministry of Development is a government body that participated, along with the Catalan Government and the Barcelona Provincial Council, in financing the work through the One Percent for Culture. Today, the media knew the results of works thanks to a guided tour commented by the Director of Museums of Sitges, Vinyet Panyella.
The reform of El Cau Ferrat Museum and Maricel Museum followed a common approach: the rehabilitation of the two buildings, along with Can Rocamora, that links them, to retain its original spirit, but adapting them to all core needs and facilities provided by modern 21th Century museums. The project overcame the complexity and the corresponding limitations of space, with imaginative solutions and commitment to respect to native heritage and aesthetic style.
The museum project premiered by the two museums has a double purpose: the Cau Ferrat was renovated with the intention of recovering its original appearance, when Rusiñol transformed the building into his studio workshop in the late nineteenth century to become the Temple of Modernism, while Maricel Museum designed a complete artistic route, with works of great quality spanning from the 10th Century to realism and figuration of the first half of the twentieth century through the art collections of Dr. Jesús Pérez Rosales and the town of Sitges.
In both cases, the museum presentation integrated several languages, techniques and artistic media in order to achieve the maximum consistency in the faithful reproduction of study Rusiñol as it was at the time (in the case El Cau) and the chronological sequence of the development of arts (in the case of Maricel).
Access
The reform led to a new design of the route along both museums through one single visit. Admission is by Can Rocamora, the place in which information service and reception are installed, plus a new museum shop. During refurbishment, they found an arc of the seventeenth century, which had been hidden by later constructions and was restored and integrated into the design space. In this building, there is also an elevator access to each floor.
The tour begins at El Cau Ferrat, where visitors can find the study workshop of Santiago Rusiñol, as created in the late nineteenth century and opened to the public as a museum in 1933. The intervention at El Cau Ferrat was especially careful in restoring stained glass, tiles, ceramics, wood, wrought iron, and also all furniture in exhibition. The process allowed us to reproduce, using different chromatic studies, the original colors of the rooms, by providing a more intense blue. This action is particularly relevant in the room that held the office of Rusiñol, which recovered a sky blue color, as it was considered to be in the late nineteenth century.
The hall recovered the five stained glass windows that Rusiñol installed in the late nineteenth century, and that disappeared during the second half of the twentieth century and that were in the museum store. We are dealing here with five 30 centimeters medallions depicting scenes of flora and fauna.
From the second floor of El Cau Ferrat, once visited the Great Hall, the visitor returns to Can Rocamora, where there are interpretation spaces about Rusiñol, the Cau and history and environment of Can Rocamora. On the second floor of this building, a showroom was prepared for small samples related to museum collections of Sitges. The first of such exhibition informs about the process of acquisition, preservation, study and dissemination of the museums of Sitges during refurbishment works. At Can Rocamora there is also a space for video projections with different audiovisual contents directed by filmmaker Francesc Bellmunt.
Then the route enters the Maricel Museum and begins a tour of the last ten centuries of art thanks to the large collection bequeathed by Dr. Jesús Pérez Rosales and the Sitges Art Collection. The renovation was especially careful highlighting the majesty of Maricel rooms and the balanced "Noucentista" aesthetic. At one end of the Lookout, where there is a precious balcony over the Mediterranean, the "Noucentista" loggia was recovered and now holds the original sculpture made of Josep Reynès of El Greco 1898 that until now was at the Maricel Palace.
The Maricel Museum displays 269 pieces, of which 30% had never been exhibited before. On one hand, there are works recovered from the depository of Sitges Museums, and by the other by pieces on loan to add to their collections. In this regard, it's worth noting transfers received from the National Art Museum of Catalonia, the Museum of Montserrat, the art collection of the Generalitat of Catalonia and Barcelona Provincial Council and the building of Can Falç, located at Passeig de la Ribera in Sitges, which will soon be converted into a new local museum. Among these works, there are oils by Ramon Casas, Joaquim Sunyer, Lola Anglada, Joan Batlle and Alfred Sisquella, plus sculptures from Pere Jou, antique furniture and a collection of “noucentista" glass.
The facilities of Museum Maricel unveil a lounge and a training space with teaching functions.
The intervention on the three buildings was complemented by the most advanced security systems -active and passive - covering different areas, protection of collections and convenience of visitors. These actions involved the placement of infrared and ultraviolet filters on windows, adopting a lighting system that favors the protection of works, providing the necessary services for an optimal air conditioning system for collections, removing architectural barriers without aesthetic aggressions, and creating a system of signage and information to facilitate the tour and explanation of the works.
