First floor, Museum of the Shots of Granada

The great hall of this imperious house, whose ceilings are frescoed between beam and beam reproducing the struggle between good and evil, you can access a beautiful arcaded courtyard where is observed on the left a staircase, which the beginning was the main staircase and to the right a wooden staircase built later for ease of access.

The collection began to meet shortly before 1929, once the creation of a museum center dedicated to the history of the city was decided. From that moment, its first director, Antonio Gallego Burín, had the financing of the Royal Tourism Commission, on which the museum depended, to acquire unique pieces that would fill the previously designed speech.

For this purpose, direct purchase was made in antique dealers and the acquisition of some private fund, such as that which belonged to the writer and journalist Francisco de Paula Valladar. Over time, other works came from the museum as a result of the donation of individuals, which enriched both the museum’s background and that of its library, centered on the history of Granada, and its newspaper library, which gathers Granada press from the 18th century to the present.

Exhibition Halls

Room IX. Elizabethan Room:
An environmental recreation of the Elizabethan period, incorporating Elizabethan armchairs, rugs or furniture, making it a period room.

Room 9 recreates a nineteenth-century hall, with female portraits of artists from Granada and documentary and graphic references to the most important women of Granada’s life of the moment. These images are repeated in the next room, along with other testimonies of the cultural life of the city of the nineteenth century: theatrical posters, brochures, photographs and prints; not forgetting the gatherings like La Cofradía del Avellano,represented through the portrait of Ángel Ganivet.

Room X. Grenadine woman:
The female presence through a collection of oils, basically portraits of women, of which the treatment given to the clothes of the protagonists stands out. They emphasize Woman with parrot, of Joaquin de la Rosa, dated 1839, or Woman of the green dress of José González of 1851. It also has a literary collection of traditions where the Granada woman is the protagonist, highlighting the magazine of the bourgeoisie Mare de Família, the biographies of Eugenia de Montijo or Mariana Pineda or photographs such as that of Emilia Llanos. Also are artistic-literary associations, like the Grammar schoolo The Grenadine Rope.

Room XI. Great events:
Journalism was the axis of communication of the Century. The newspapers are the richest heritage of this museum, so it becomes the main protagonist in this room. The Defender of Granada or El Loco Constitucional are just some of the examples there. The most important topics that they denounce are the poverty, illiteracy or the poor health situation of the city, and they are the driving force behind the demands of modernity that are so in demand in this age.

Room 11 documents, thanks to the press, the historical evolution of Granada, from the Napoleonic invasion to the social and urban changes experienced in the city around 1900.

Room XII. Room of the celebrations:
Sample of the great celebrations of Granada and those of district. The phenomenon of posterism is evident in this room. Bullfighting, hand programs, texts and engravings of the city’s festive tradition and the growing role of news photography. You can also see a unique piece, the axis of the big festival of Corpus Christi, which is known as the Tarasca.

At the end of the route is room12, where the main festival of the city, Corpus Christi, is the protagonist of posters and lithographs.

Museum of the Shots of Granada
Casa de los Tiros is a museum and property located in the Spanish city of Granada, autonomous community of Andalusia. It is located in the Realejo neighborhood, on Pavaneras street. Its name is due to the artillery pieces in its battlements. It is currently the headquarters of the Casa de los Tiros Museum in Granada; for some years, it also hosted the Athenaeum of Granada.

The museum was growing with works such as drawings, prints, lithographs, photographs, plans, pieces of local handicrafts such as mud, lanterns, textiles, bibliographic backgrounds of Granada, travel, serials, brochures, posters or newspapers, donated by individuals who make up the funds of this museum.

The selection criteria for the objects displayed a profound sense of the future, because efforts were focused on recovering drawings, engravings, lithographs, photographs, drawings, pieces of local craftsmanship such as earthenware, streetlamps, fabrics, etc. Bibliographical objects with a Granada theme, travel documents, series of publications, pamphlets etc. were also collected. This significant effort to organise the Museum was completed with the collection, through purchase or donation, of private archives from individuals who were of note in the cultural life of Granada. Gallego Burín would also donate his personal archives to this museum.

In the layout of the Casa de los Tiros Museum, there are several halls of special interest, such as the one dedicated to the Romantic travellers, centred on the figure of Washington Irving; the hall on industrial art, which accommodates the value and importance of the local craftsmanship; or the hall dedicated to the gypsy world, the only one dedicated to such an important human group at the time.

The historical importance of the building must also be mentioned, in particular, the tower or main body with which the house, as an example of architecture from the 16th century, is presented to the city. Based on an Islamic past, the tower was transformed by its owner, Gil Vázquez Rengifo, in the 16th century, developing an interesting symbolic programme linked to and based on the exaltation of the medieval hero and the passage into modernity in this process.

Collection
The museum offers visitors three tours of its facilities. First, the main itinerary, room to room, starting from the central courtyard and ascending the stairs to the different floors. Second, the visitor can opt for a thematic or purely chronological view, thanks to the flexibility of his museological approach. Finally, a third option is proposed consisting of visiting the building itself for its architectural value, focusing on the uniqueness of the tower, patio and garden that the house has, drawing attention to its spatial conception as a typical Granada home.

Given the nature of the museum’s funds and the era to which they mostly belong, the nineteenth century has chosen to focus the discourse of the permanent exhibition in this historical period, with the intention of extending this chronological limit in the future and being aware that it is always possible to use the temporary exhibition hall as a complement to expand in detail the multiple aspects of museum discourse.

Knowing the richness of the exhibited collection it is easy to propose or undertake other routes or visits from other perspectives, such as a purely chronological vision or the possibility of following the history and evolution of various artistic techniques such as print or photography.

Finally, it is highly recommended a visit in which the protagonist is the building starting with the spaces of the museum that remember his past as a palace of Gil Vázquez Rengifo and later of the Granada Venegas or Marquises of Campotéjar, of which the hallway is preserved with animal paintings on the ceiling; following the main staircase, where a collection of portraits of Spanish kings of the House of Austria from the Generalife is exhibited; the small staircase of the 16th century with wall paintings of the Virtues; and, finally, the Golden Square, the main hall of the building, which retains remnants of mural painting and a rich wooden wall decorated with reliefs of the most important characters in the history of Spain until the reign of Emperor Carlos V.