Vilafranca del Penedés plans to inaugurate the Vinseum, in its final configuration, next spring. The road to that date has been long. The competition to renovate the old Palau Reial and the chapel of Sant Pelegrí, and to tear down the estate located between these works -Cal Pa-i-Figues- and replace it with a new one, was failed in a distant 2004. They have passed Thus, almost two decades since the process began, divided into successive phases.
The bulk of the collections of this museum dedicated to wine will be exhibited in the new building which, clad in copper and glass on the façade, expresses itself in a contemporary language. Given that we are in the monumental heart of Vilafranca, in the Plaza de Jaume I, in front of the Basilica of Santa María, it cannot be ruled out that this expression generates reservations. But it is no less true that Gothic has not been in style for centuries; that each era has the right and the duty to manifest itself; and that when the Gothic is updated, as Jeroni Martorell did with the Palau Reial after the civil war, the only thing that is usually achieved is a pasteurized version of the original.
In addition, the most important thing in this piece is the way in which it looks for square meters for exhibition on an irregular plan, typical of an urban fabric of so many centuries, with so many historical layers, in compacted and deep buildings, which make it difficult for natural light to enter. . This last problem is satisfactorily resolved here, to the extent possible, with a glazed ground floor that, according to the architect, gives transparency and a floating point to the new volume; with a “corraló” -characteristic local typology- of access that fosters an illusion of public space under the building. And, also, and mainly, with the glass openings on the façade, with splendid views over the basilica and the square and, already invisible from the street, with the rear staircase, whose stream of natural light contrasts with the gloom of not a few rooms, some limited by exposed medieval walls.
Once the space has been obtained – some 3,600 square metres, on the ground floor plus three – and the routes have been designed, it now remains to resolve the conditioning of the spaces, which will be the responsibility of the team led by Dani Freixes. And, if one day they reach the economic resources, a subsequent extension that should take the Vinseum premises to Hermenegild Clascar street, where it would provide them with a rear façade.
