Alcoy: Art Nouveau façades, the MAF and Cervantes air-raid shelter

A visit to Alcoy can follow three quite different interests: the buildings of its industrial middle class, the Moors and Christians festival, and memories of the Spanish Civil War. Deciding which appeals to you helps you choose a museum, rather than moving between collections without knowing what distinguishes them.

Reading the Art Nouveau façades

At Casa del Pavo, look for the peacock figures and ironwork on the balconies. The Círculo Industrial was a meeting place for Alcoy’s industrial bourgeoisie. These buildings connect early twentieth-century decoration with the city’s industrial wealth; there is something to discover from the street even without going inside.

Two museums, two very different stories

The Museu Alcoià de la Festa, run by the Associació de Sant Jordi, explores the festival dedicated to Saint George through costumes, photographs, objects and audiovisual displays. Choose it if you want to understand the parades when visiting Alcoy outside the festival itself.

The Cervantes air-raid shelter preserves an underground passage system more than a hundred metres long. Its exhibition combines records of the bombing with testimonies from people who experienced it. The focus here is civilian life during wartime, rather than festival costume.

For a first visit, our suggestion is to combine the façade walk with one of these museums and keep the other as an optional addition. The source links lead to the individual institutions: check their visiting arrangements separately, as admission to one does not give access to the other.