09/04/2013 00:00
TW
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STAFF REPORTER THE “Friends of Manacor Museum” are asking the local council to authorise and fund the building of an extension to the museum. Esperança Nicolau, the Association's President, said yesterday that the storerooms at the museum are currently so full of archaeological material that there is no room for proper investigation and cataloguing of the items.


Furthermore, she said, some of the rooms at the museum which were originally supposed to be allocated for exhibition purposes have been closed to the public because they're still full of unsorted material.

The Association has been collecting signatures as part of its campaign to persuade Manacor Council to build an extension to the museum. If the Association succeeds, it means that exhibition halls can be freed up to display some exquisite finds unearthed in Manacor dating from Mediaeval times.

Nicolau said that it will also allow continued investigation into recent research on the period of Islamic domination prompted by the discovery of ceramics in the historic centre of Manacor last year.

The extension that the “Friends of Manacor Museum” have in mind is a two-storey 683-square metre building with a basement. Nicolau said that the structure could incorporate a library, conference hall, various storerooms, laboratories and archaeological workshops.

At Manacor Council, Culture Councillor Isabel Febrer said yesterday that the project was even now being considered but authorisation was needed from the Council of Majorca's Heritage department because the extension plans as they stand will mean building on what is currently categorised as rural land. According to the department's timetable, she added, nothing could be started until the year 2013.

The new building would embrace part of the rear historic fortifications of Torre dels Enagistes and would connect with the current museum through a covered doorway hewn into one of the stone walls. When the scheme is complete, the ground floors of the present museum would then no longer need to be storerooms and could open as exhibition halls.