The museum, which received a special award from the European Museum Forum in 2014 as part of the European Museum of the Year Award, is not an ordinary representative of this type of institution. In fact, it is a permanent exhibition of the local diocese museum, carefully built into the cathedral. The new components, designed by Vaillo + Irigaray Architects, right up to graphic design, exist in dialogue with parts of the building at different times, right down to the foundations of buildings from the 2nd century BC within its walls.
At the same time, the exposition is not devoted to religious art, which could be expected with the customer - the Archdiocese of Pamplona, but to the West, but not as a geographical concept or civilization, but "the territory of consciousness, the horizon of humanity, based on the concepts of freedom, solidarity and human dignity." The exposition embraces several "root" civilizations, from which the familiar concept of the West grew - ancient, Jewish, German, traces its formation in the Middle Ages and flourishing in modern times. Western achievements have not been forgotten either - democracy, critical rationalism, a state based on the rule of law, a free economy based on private property, freedom of conscience, human rights … However, at the end, the question is asked: what now? How will we face the future?
The unity of the exposition, leading the viewer through different rooms and different eras, was emphasized by the architects with the help of 1 centimeter thick plates of black steel. They act now in the form of a bridge or pavement, then showcases or benches; texts are punched in them, lighting is also installed there. The project carefully treats the thousand-year-old buildings with which it adjoins (except for the existing cathedral, which was built from the 14th to the 18th centuries, the remains of a Romanesque palace of the 11th century, an archbishop's residence of the 12th century and a Gothic palace of an archdeacon of the 14th-16th centuries have survived) and almost not " touches."
The very idea of the exhibition is similar to cinema: the narrative is based on the change of frames and different levels of reading - signs, images, objects, sounds, texts, video projections, codes, smells.
