We’d like to suggest a plan for rounding out your visit to Granada for the All Saints Long Weekend: the new permanent exhibition at Palacio de los Olvidados Sephardic museum. There you can find the torture instruments on display which were used over the centuries to “extract the truth” during the Court of the Inquisition’s proceedings.
The visit will also shed some light on one of the most gruesome institutions in the history of our country and Europe. The overall aim of the exhibition, to avoid focusing on the dark sadism providing the visitor with an understanding of the true extent of the Inquisition’s activities, how it was organised, its importance as a driver and censor of ideas and attitudes as well as the consequences derived from them for the societies of the time.
“Inquisition. Old Torture Instruments” not only can you see the originals and replicas of the real instruments on display, but you can also learn in depth about the social changes the habitual practice of torture and the organisation of Inquisition courts in Europe from the Middle Ages until the 19th century entailed.
The display, which classifies the instruments as being for torture, capital punishment or public humiliation, offers modules created especially for Granada covering the persecution of the Jews and the Spanish Inquisition
The Inquisition in Granada
The exhibition is organised into five blocks. The first two present the social, political and religious aspects which are covered by the activities of the Court, as a frame of reference.
These devices and machines used by the civil and ecclesiastical courts to obtain confessions convey the anguish and fear that the accused would have felt with torment in sight. Texts and prints are presented alongside the machines helping to put them in context.
In this sense, the order of the exhibition is employed to understand the social aspect of fear, when not open terror, which the possibility of being accused in front of the Court provoked.
The exhibition can be visited in Palacio de Los Olvidados, on the street Cuesta de Santa Inés, 6 in the lower Albayzín, every day from 10:30am to 8pm.