During summertime each year, the Romans walk again through the territory of Sintra, in Portugal. Illuminated by torches they remember other times in a territory that had once been theirs. It’s a new night of history recreated in the Archaeological Museum of Odrinhas an ambitious ongoing initiative since 2006.
"Hail! I, Seneca, the Pater Familias of Domus, salute you.”
Projecting his voice over the central corridor of the Latin epigraphy hall of the Archaeological Museum of Sao Miguel de Odrinhas (MASMO), Jose Cardim Ribeiro welcomes visitors who immerse themselves in the chamber just after passing the Etruscan room that begins the museum visit. The stage is set for reenactment of the past.
Few recognize in the robes of the Roman citizen receiving them the archaeologist and director of the museum, and mind behind the proposal for a different night. The show that along summertime takes place in MASMO integrates into the so called European Night of Museums, but has now gone beyond the single night exhibition, returning various weekends each year. With the 2006 "rehearsal" the team started, says Cardim Ribeiro, "a night journey through the exhibition spaces, a visit that far exceeds the requirements of a conventional tour."
Built to receive the huge collection of Roman and other eras collected in the municipality of Sintra, not far from the Portugal capital, Lisbon, the museum was built from scratch, revolving around a room called "The Roman Basilica”, the central corridor opening between votive stones, such as a Roman burial along the way, creating a unique scenic effect. Teresa Simoes, archaeologist and Assistant Director of MASMO recalls that "when the museum was being built we were already dreaming about what could be done in this space." The realization came with the integration into the initiative of the Night of Museums, but from the outset the team decided to extend the representations over the years, even introducing them, with modifications in the regular schedule of the museum, offering, says Teresa Simões, "a special ambience, a more intimate and unique view of the museum's collection."
With the cooperation of all staff and a minimal budget they prepared costumes, accessories, everything needed to create such a portal for a journey through time. Visitors in the first session – 120 were expected they got more than 400 - justified the continuation of the script that is based on a route taken in the light of lanterns and torches, led by figures dressed as Romans. They led the audience through the votive altars of the "Roman road”. On the way, the stone inscriptions in Latin are translated, recreating a practice of antiquity. Texts accessories portray the daily lives of people living in the western end of the Roman Empire in the vast plains between Odrinhas and Sao Joao das Lampas.
Visually, the experience is unique. The colour clad figures prancing amidst the carved stones, emerging from darkness that only the traditional lighting tears here and there, suggest a leap into the unknown, as if a window to the past opens, placing the visitor at the front row to a kind of "Roman renaissance" suggests Cardim Ribeiro.
Cardim Ribeiro, a scholar of the Roman period, suggests that the experience of the museum night wants "to achieve a dream and the consolidation of the museum as a living entity and cultural center." He and Teresa Simões exchange a look of complicity as they plot what can be done in the future. The set-top dramatization of the meaning of the gods of the Greco-Roman pantheon is the starting point for a series of projects that the team has placed all this time. Cardim Ribeiro says that it is not anything new, that all this has been done in the Baroque period, it was necessary to explain the gods, the muses, a mythology that is very much alive, waiting for people to (re)awaken it. And that, decoded, helps us understand who we are.
Perhaps for this reason the museum has an ongoing series of educational workshops that aim to give young people a smaller vision of the Roman legacy. Writing as the Romans did, designing mosaics and playing games with the Romans are three options for a day at the museum, for an audience of 5 to 12 years. There are also activities for families. During these activities the participant is immersed in the Roman world, by learning the terms of the time as the "prandium", Roman's lunch served at the end of afternoon games, bread with butter and cheese, milk and nuts.
The Archaeological Museum of Sao Miguel de Odrinhas is repository to one of the most significant collections of Roman gravestones epigraphed in the Iberian Peninsula. The MASMO, as it is called, occupies a building erected from scratch, an architectural puzzle that brings together in one body successive styles in the region. The original museum concept date back to the Renaissance, when someone, presumably Francisco d'Ollanda, a well known Portuguese artist, decided to gather around the old chapel of St. Michael the epigraphic evidence found among the Roman ruins in the region. It is therefore one of the oldest museums in the world.
The museum is located in the village of Sao Miguel de Odrinhas, on the landscaping road that leads from Sintra, the Mountain of the Moon, to Ericeira, a fishing village and surfer’s paradise on the Portuguese west coast.
