Visigothic Collection

The Church of Santa Clara consists of two rooms. The first is the nave of the church itself, and the other is a space attached to it.

The Visigothic Collection itself is housed in the nave. The exhibition, intended to be a provisional one pending the construction of a new building, arranges different marble specimens throughout the nave, either free-standing or suspended from the walls. At the same time, two display cabinets and a display stand house a number of small pieces, mainly ceramics and bronzes. Most of the marble, which is the highlight of the collection, was used to decorate religious buildings between the 5th and 8th centuries. It includes many types from the floor to the ceiling, including altars, niches, cladding panels for baseboards, screens used to delimit spaces inside the church, pilasters, lintels, capitals and, finally, imposts and cornices, the latter of which were used to standardise the height of the re-used Roman columns before building the arches of the naves. In terms of iconography, regardless of the type of piece we are looking at, we can see religious themes (crosses and other Christian symbols), geometric, architectural, vegetal and, to a lesser extent, figurative themes, also with a strong symbolic character. Finally, it should be remembered that funerary inscriptions occupy an important place alongside decorative sculpture. In this case, these inscriptions were private, but they were also located in the surroundings of the church.

The Hall of Coats of Arms is the name given to a room adjoining the main nave. It takes its name from the fact that it houses a notable heraldic collection dating from the 16th to 18th centuries, with its pieces taken from different palaces in the city of Mérida. In addition to these, some medieval pieces are on display; particularly notable is the tombstone that bears witness to the erection of the citadel of Mérida by the emir Abd al-Rahman II in the year 835.