As part of the European Heritage Days in Muro 2025, an interpretive walk and guided tour will take place on Saturday, November 29th at 9:30 a.m., focusing on the academicist and neoclassical heritage of Muro.

The activity will be led by Josep Valero, cultural heritage manager, who will guide participants through different areas of the town to explore how academicism and neoclassicism shaped its local architecture. Throughout the route, attendees will learn about the stylistic features, characteristic elements, and historical context that defined this artistic and urban phase in Muro.

The meeting point will be the entrance gate of the Muro Cemetery, where the tour will begin.

The 19th century in Spain, often sidelined in cultural heritage promotion policies due to its complexity and conflicts, has become one of the key pillars in explaining Muro’s urban, social, and cultural reality. In an era where artistic styles blended and merged, Muro embraced academic ideals to forge a unique identity through Neoclassicism.

Its urban fabric stands as a living testament to this process. The central streets of the town, shaped by their aesthetic transformation, exhibit a coherence that goes beyond mere urban planning. This reorganization aimed not only at visual harmony but also at functionality, creating main axes such as Carrer de l’Àngel, which connected the most emblematic points of the town.

The redevelopment of Plaça Palàcio, marked by the construction of the Alonso family’s palace-house, and the renewal of communal spaces like the Canyaret, Hospital, and Sant Roc washing places, laid the foundations of an urban model that combined monumentality with functionality. These spaces became nerve centers of community life, reinforcing collective pride and reflecting the Enlightenment ideals that permeated the era.

However, the most significant urban transformation was driven by the construction of the town’s new religious landmark: the Church of Saint John the Baptist. Designed by the renowned Franciscan architect Vicente Cuenca between 1827 and 1837, the church was adorned with fresco mural paintings by the Valencian artist Miguel Parra before its doors even opened, one of the most important mural painting collections of the 19th century in the Region of Valencia. Parra would later become the director of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Carlos in Valencia and a royal painter for the courts of Ferdinand VII and Isabella II.

Address
Francisco Vitoria Laporta, 1, 03830 , Spain