La Ciudad Descubierta

Urban archaeology space in the basement of Alicante City Hall, with remains of the medieval and early modern city and free admission.

Opening hoursFree admission

Website Directions

About the museum

La Ciudad Descubierta is a museumised archaeological site preserved in the basement of the new building of Alicante City Hall. The remains came to light during works to extend the municipal headquarters. They show urban structures from different periods, layered on top of one another, from the Middle Ages to the early modern era.

Between the 12th and 15th centuries, dwellings of the Muslim population and the Christian wall of the Vila Nova, built in the second half of the 13th century with its antemural, are documented. In the 16th century a regular, planned layout appears, with commercial and industrial buildings alongside a new wall, completed in 1596.

After the bombardment by the French fleet in 1691, the Baroque town hall was built over part of the medieval wall and the houses became larger. In the 19th and 20th centuries the street became a group of dwellings with shared courtyards, and the site also preserves a network of sewers, irrigation channels and cisterns. The exhibition makes it possible to imagine what the city looked like before the 18th century, of which few other traces survive because of wartime destruction.

Highlights

Remains of Muslim dwellings from the 12th to 15th centuries
Christian wall of the Vila Nova and the wall of 1596
Planned 16th-century street with commercial buildings
Network of sewers, irrigation channels and cisterns
Free admission

Permanent exhibition

La Ciudad Descubierta – Archaeological remains preserved in situ showing how the city looked from the Middle Ages to the early modern period: wall, dwellings, streets, sewers and cisterns.

Operated by: Ayuntamiento de Alicante