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• 03 / 30 / 2010

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The transitory exhibition room from the La Real Fuerza Museum Castle is welcoming an important selection of objects found in an archaeological context dated between the second half of the 18th century and 1830, approximately- of everyday life in the
convent of Santa Teresa de Jesús, an institution founded on January 28, 1702 by the very important bishop Diego Evelino de Compostela, to welcome the religious order of the Carmelitas Descalzas, who lived there until 1928, when they moved to their new seat in El Vedado.

The pieces come from historic-archaeological researches made since the year 2005 by the Archaeological Team from the Monument Restoration Company from the Office of the Historian of the City of Havana.

This is an indispensable complement for the multi-disciplinary restoration that is being made in this important building, included in the year 2000 in the List of
Endangered World Heritage Sites by UNESCO and which is currently being carefully recovered.

There might be seen dishes, cups, cream vases, jars and other objects made in important pottery centers such as Puebla de los Ángeles in Mexico and Seville, in Spain. Meanwhile there is also Delf ceramics from the Netherlands and England, with decoration motives inspired in China and from France, there is a wonderful jar of the seine Policromo type with a chronology from 1690 to 1765.

There are also examples of ordinary ceramics of the sort of Red Painted Mexico, with a production chronology from 1550 to 1750 and which is much found in our city in a huge variety of forms.

There is much importance in some glass pieces, such as a small vase found in one of the crack of the arch of the first temple, placed possibly as a building offering, or a bottle which was probably made in Andalusia with engraved Chinese decoration.

In the collection there are also important devotion objects such as religious medals ?that remember Saint Tomas de Aquino, Saint Joseph, the Virgin Mary and Jesus- and a Caravaca Cross, together with small boxes for missals or prayer books.

Related to a delicate craft industry developed by the religious people during the second half of the 18th century, there were a set of shapes carved in mica, which were afterward painted with images and placed in shrines.

This exhibition, previous to the one which will be finally placed in the inside of the convent, once the restoration work is over, is an example of the information that is offered by archaeology on the colonial past of our city and its contribution to the knowledge of highly transformed buildings, since it allows for old building techniques to be re-discovered and the space functions that do not exist nowadays, as was in this case the area occupied by the kitchen, the baths and latrines.

The remains of the mural paintings that made the building beautiful or that filled it with symbolism have also seen the light. This is the case of the enigmatic tumulo crosses found in the spandrels of the arches of the first cloister.

Research work is still underway and there are new foundings every day that make this collection richer and richer, as is the case of the recent discovery of a huge hard clay majolica basin possibly Cuban made- under the marble floor stones of the convent church, which may be appreciated by the visitors to the exhibition.

Source: Dirección Patrimonio Cultural and Cubarte