It’s been almost twenty years since they set foot in Spain and five years since they arrived in Europe. The warriors of Xi’an, from the mausoleum of Emperor Qin, considered the eighth wonder of the world, have been on display since yesterday to the public visiting the Archaeological Museum of Alicante (MARQ).
During his 2004 and 2005 visit to the cities of Barcelona, ??Valencia and Madrid, they accumulated some two million visitors, which makes Carlos Mazón, president of the Alicante Provincial Council, foresee that the exhibition will attract “visitors from the five continents”, hundreds of thousands of people who will represent a record for the MARQ, a museum that since its foundation has enjoyed notable success and significant prestige that led it to be considered the best European museum in 2004.
The inauguration ceremony was attended by the Minister of Culture and Tourism of the People’s Republic of China, Hu Heping, who recalled that the mausoleum of the first emperor received the Prince of Asturias Award in 2010, and is considered in his country one of the most important contributions of China to universal culture, along with the Great Wall, classical poems and the invention of paper.
“Thanks to the objects on display, the public will be able to enjoy the idiosyncrasy of the Qin and Han dynasties and the beauty of our culture, a great step to deepen the cultural and friendly exchange of our peoples,” he said in his speech. .
Before the first visitors have the opportunity to recommend the visit -which they will- the expectation is already enormous, as a tour of the ticket sales website proves: the guided tours in Spanish, scheduled every half hour, are practically sold out for on the weekend and on Easter holidays, as well as tickets without a guide.
The inauguration ceremony was also attended by the vice president of the Consell, Aitana Mas, the Minister of Innovation, Josefina Bueno, the sub-delegate of the Government, Araceli Poblador, and the mayor of Alicante, among other authorities.
As explained by the curator of the exhibition, Marcos Martinon-Torres, archaeologist director of a research program at the Qin Mausoleum in Xi’an, unlike other previous exhibits, the one that will remain at the MARQ until January 2024 “offers an unprecedented design, with didactic materials and accessible to all audiences, as well as sensory resources that have allowed the creation of an immersive environment through different scents: room 1 smells of cherry and rice; room 2, with incense, and room 3, with lotus flower and tea” The musical pieces created expressly by the Alicante composer Luis Ivars accompany and envelop the visitor throughout the tour.
Although the new deputy for Culture, Juan de Dios Navarro, was in charge of conducting the official act of presentation of the sample and giving the floor to each one of the authorities, he had the deference to give his turn to speak to his predecessor, Julia Parra, who resigned from her position last week due to her break with Ciudadanos, the party she represented. The deputy stressed that the prestige of the MARQ allows “the main museums in the world to trust us with their treasures.”
A general, archers, charioteers, spearmen, chariot drivers and support soldiers make up the group of warriors who, in the central room, protected behind effectively illuminated glass cylinders, allow the visitor to appreciate every detail of their physiognomy.
In this same room, we also find figures from the Yanling mausoleum, another terracotta army -on a smaller scale- made in the time of the powerful Han dynasty, which allows us to understand the continuity of traditions that survived over time.
Before this third and main room of the collection, the visitor goes through another two that first offer a review of the 500 years before Qin Shi Huang and the immediately subsequent Han dynasty (from 770 to 220 BC), delving into the life of the noble classes and in the state bureaucracy, represented by ritual bronzes, huge bells with unique sounds and precious jade objects.
In this first room, among the aroma of the cherry trees, weapons, coins, units of volume and exotic objects that arrived in Europe via the Silk Road are exhibited, as well as a reproduction of a monolith with an inscription from the period of the Warring States (475-221 BC), where the first known sample of Chinese calligraphy is reflected.
The second room has as its epicenter the world of the dead with numerous funerary objects. As commissioner Martinon-Torres recalled, what has come down to us is part of a mausoleum “that was not conceived to be shared with us, the living.”
Booking tickets to visit the exhibition The Legacy of the Qin and Han Dynasties, China | The warriors of Xi’an can be requested through the website and at the MARQ ticket offices for a price of 5 euros and discounts for people over 65, young people and students, among other groups.