Dates
April 3, 2025
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"The rooms of wonder. The materiality of the unexplained and the origin of today’s museums"

History of cabinets of curiosities or chambers of wonders: spaces for mystery, science and magical thinking.

A lecture by the magician Paco González

  • April 3, 7:30 p.m.
  • Auditorium of the Zamora Public Library.
  • Free admission until full capacity.

Magician Paco González presents his lecture on cabinets of curiosities (or chambers of wonders), a fascinating and little-known topic about a fundamental part of the history of our country and the social and cultural context of Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries.

Cabinets of curiosities could occupy large rooms in a palace or small, special cabinets. They displayed collections of objects with a heterogeneous theme and exotic character with the aim of stimulating the observer's imagination, satisfying the curiosity so characteristic of the cultured man of the Renaissance and Baroque and raising suggestive questions about the strange and unexplained. Cabinets of curiosities allowed a privileged few to expand the boundaries of their world without leaving their homes in an atmosphere of mystery and knowledge that left no one indifferent: disturbing automata that imitated the movement of hieratic-faced specters that floated weightlessly above the heads of those who contemplated them in absorption, figures and masks from distant tribes associated with magical rituals, paintings of dreamlike scenes, sophisticated gadgets for astronomical observation, minerals, seashells and fossils, bones of overseas specimens associated with fantastic creatures with extraordinary powers... Any piece had a place in these cabinets as long as it contributed to creating an atmosphere of magic and mystery for the delight of kings, aristocrats, artists and intellectuals of the time.

For approximately one hour, Paco González will take us on a historical journey through the most interesting events and characters within the framework of the development of these spaces for science and mystery in which today's museums, especially those of natural sciences, have their origin. He will also show some pieces from his own collection of objects related to magical thinking that the magician from Zamora has been collecting over more than 20 years in his travels around the world working as a researcher and illusionist.

Address and map location

  • Postal address Biblioteca Pública de Zamora - Plaza Claudio Moyano, s/n. municipality of Zamora . NaN. Zamora