It is in a rural location of a great natural beauty, between Urkiola and Gorbea Natural Parks and on the shores of the reservoirs of Alava.

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FREE ENTRANCE

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The Basque Pottery Museum is located in the Ollerias neighbourhood of Elosu, Legutio town. The building is an ancient pottery restored and opened to the public on 1993.

This ambitious project of complete recovery, was started up by Blanka Gomez of Segura. The pottery, built in 1711, was the ancient pottery workshop where several generations of the Ortiz of Zarate families worked.

 

In the year 1958, when the building work of the Urrunaga reservoir finished and the lands where the potters used to be supplied, were flooded, they felt obliged to abandon the activity as they lacked the clay, its raw material that was left under the water.

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Attached to the building it is located the huge ancient oven. It has a square floor and it is nine meters height. For centuries thousands of pieces were baked inside it until in 1958 the activity stopped. Since 1993 year it is included as a Monument in the General Inventory of the Basque Cultural Heritage.

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In the Museum we can contemplate the ancient pieces and see working in the potter´s wheel. In the first floor of the building a collection of 380 Basque popular ceramic pieces is exposed, property of the Basque Government, used from the 15th century and they transfer us to the daily life of past times. Furthermore, on its shop, it is possible to acquire the potteries that nowadays continue being done in a handicraft way and with the same love as long time ago.

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The guided visit to the Museum includes

The permanent collection, the monographic exposition, the visit to the ancient oven and the workshops.

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