Museum of Love and Marriage

Navarcles drew up a plan to revitalise the town in view of the challenge imposed by the opening, at the monastery of Sant Benet de Bages, of a large culture and tourism complex. The aim was to create an attraction within the town that would appeal to a part of the large number of visitors that would be generated. Hence the idea to create a museum at ca l’Aguilar, different from the typical local museum, based on a singular theme: love and marriage. This theme is related to the town's patron saint, Saint Valentine, and had to be treated comprehensively but also in a museologically attractive way.

The proposal for the Museum of Love and Marriage is based on a thorough museological discourse with the help of expert anthropologists and historians and presenting love and marriage as a universal phenomenon using a broad perspective and, at the same time, setting it in a specific place and time (traditional Catalonia). By means of interaction between the space (recreating different representative sets) and other modern museographic resources, the exhibition aims to explain some of the significant episodes for the phenomenon of love in a rural setting (groups of young boys and girls, introduction to the family, the dance, celebration, preparing to get married, the wedding, the wedding night, married life, etc.), as well as the evolution from romantic love to the different types of love today. The proposal sees the museum as a specialist facility regarding the phenomenon of love, with a shop, a programme of activities and other complementary elements.