The Councilor for Heritage and Cultural Resources of Valencia City Council, Glòria Tello, has announced that, from 6 June, La Lonja de los Mercaderes, the Torres de Serranos and de Quart, and the Archaeological Center of L’Almoina, they will reopen on Mondays in their usual schedule, a dynamic that had been suspended due to the pandemic.
Tello has pointed out that «closing one day a week, generally on Mondays, is a common practice in many European museums and heritage spaces, to allow technical maintenance operations and facilitate the management of the staff of customer service staff, although Internally, it continues to function normally.
However, it has highlighted that “tourist demand, especially in large cities, led years ago to open continuously throughout the week in specific centers to attend to the increasing number of visitors”, as indicated by the consistory in a release.
This was the case of La Lonja, the Torres de Serranos and de Quart, La Almoina and the Museo de la Ciudad, where the regular staff was reinforced with subordinate workers from other centres, but this dynamic was paralyzed due to the arrival of the Covid-19. After the end of the confinement, rigorous measures had to be adopted to prevent the transmission of the disease, including the closure of all centers on Mondays, to limit the mobility of staff and thus prevent contagion.
The mayor has stated that the “effectiveness of this decision and others adopted to respond to the pandemic has been amply demonstrated, since the impact of this on museums and heritage centers has been very low, which has allowed them to be enjoyed throughout the citizenship”.
“Now, with a drop in serious cases due to covid, and with the summer season and the upturn in tourism in the city of Valencia, we reopen La Lonja, Torres de los Serranos and de Quart and L’Almoina on Mondays” , the councilor has celebrated.
As for the Museum of the City, Tello has clarified that it does not enter into this initiative, since “it is currently closed for works, which are advancing at a good pace.”
