Visiting a museum can be an almost routine experience: display cases dulled by time, endless signs, or audio guides with faulty headphones are classic examples that, in a few centuries, might be studied as archaeological artifacts in their own right. To solve this problem and prevent yawns during the explanations, the Museu d’Història de Barcelona has created a different and fun way to discover the Catalan capital’s past.
The initiative, titled El Born de Nit, is an immersive experience featuring a variety of activities in which visitors can work with real artifacts and become archaeologists for a night, experience what the famous and terrible witch hunts were like, or step into the role of the classic gossipy grandmother, uncovering all the rumors about love, crime, and violence in 18th-century Barcelona.
These experiences will be available through December 18 on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays from 8:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. To participate in any of the three activities, you must reserve a spot through the museum’swebsite and purchase your ticket online. The fixed price is 8 euros per activity.
Investigate real organic remains dating back more than 300 years
Have you ever wondered how it’s possible to know what our ancestors ate just by looking at their bones? Well, if you take part in “Nit d’arqueologia,” you’ll find out by analyzing real organic remains from Europe’s largest urban archaeological site.
The MUHBA team has recovered some of the artifacts found across the more than 8,000 square meters of the historic Ribera neighborhood and will proceed to sift through and analyze them to uncover the diet of Barcelona’s residents in the 1700s.
The activity concludes with a nighttime tour of the remains of the streets and houses from that era, uncovering their customs, tastes, and even the most common diseases.
The Reality Behind the Famous “Witch Hunts”
One of the “customs” of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period that has inspired the most tales and stories is the terrible witch hunts. A common practice in a society that was far from granting rights and freedoms to women, it claimed the lives of many of them, who were unjustly persecuted and tortured.
In this experience, you’ll visit the archaeological site to learn how the stereotype of witches was constructed , why magic became a crime, and you’ll complete a tour of the neighborhood while learning about the processes of accusation, persecution, and condemnation that these women endured.
The “tabloids” of 18th-century Barcelona
In every good neighborhood, there’s that grandpa or grandma who knows all the gossip and rumors about their neighbors. Becoming that person will be your goal in this activity. *La finestra indiscreta* offers a very different—yet at the same time very enlightening—way to learn about the history of Barcelona.
Love stories, everyday worries, dreams and hopes, disputes between neighbors, and the romantic entanglements of the era are just some of the themes explored in this experience, which help visitors understand daily life in the 18th century from a different perspective—yet with great accuracy .
Three activities that help us discover and understand what our city’s past was like more than 300 years ago in a different, original, and—above all—very fun way.
