23. Zamora Museum

Outside town, and beneath the overhang of the wall facing the River Duero, the museum presents itself to the town as a casket containing its jewels, its memory. The museum is like a trunk cut at one stroke in which a host of sky-lights, all of the same cross-section, define various spaces through their different positions,heights and orientations. The museum is organized as a tour through the remains of history,a tour which takes a Celtiberian votive stele exhibited in the museum as its formal reference.

The structure is accommodated within a block whose outline is reinforced by a range of topographical outcrops and buildings of different sorts. This is a complex that disavows an axial academic composition, its overall quality leaning towards an architecture which is produced via a slippage between its various components, thus breaking up its overall appearance and obliging people to walk between the buildings,almost touching them, in such a way that the interstices between the latter and the rock senhance the buildings per se. The result is a compact volume that directs the attention towards the view at ground level, leaving the roof as a single plane that is seen entire from the old quarter in the high part of town.

The need to bring the collection within reach of the town shifts the former entrance from the Plaza de Santa Lucia towards the San Cipriano slope, the entrance level being raised to midheight. The creation of this level marks the fundamental starting point for the development of the program by establishing a clear stratification of uses: the reserve collections and backroom activities are grouped below this level, while above it the overheadlit museum galleries are laid out by means of a spiral circuit along a ramp bearing a number of inscriptions.

The building is constructed with white concrete walls and decking. The facade, of sandstone from the Villamayor quarries, presents a segmented arrangement of small stone blocks of the traditional size of the adobe in the area.