Valencia, [22 November 2024] – The Hortensia Herrero Art Center has been selected as a winner in the first edition of the Readers’ +History Awards, organised by National Geographic History. Specifically, it won in the category “Best Building Restoration” for the Valeriola Palace, located on Calle del Mar in central Valencia.
The award, as highlighted by National Geographic History, is a recognition “of the commitment to preserving culture and heritage”.
After a selection process carried out by experts from the publication, a voting period was opened in mid-August for the six chosen categories. The “Best Restoration of a Historic Building” category rewards an architectural project focused on the recovery, expansion, or restoration of a historic building. The main requirement was that the intervention, whether partial or total, had to remain faithful to its origins, aiming to recover its most significant features.
“We are very pleased to receive this news. We have only been open to the public for a year, and it is gratifying to see that, in this case, the readers of National Geographic History have recognised the enormous effort behind the opening of the Hortensia Herrero Art Center. It has been a year since opening to the public, but more than five years of work to restore a building that was in a very precarious condition,” explains Alejandra Silvestre, director of the Hortensia Herrero Foundation.
Much of the credit goes to ERRE Arquitectura, the studio responsible for directing the restoration: “We approached the initial project with great enthusiasm, knowing that it was essential to respect the essence of the building, which contains part of the history of the city of Valencia. The Hortensia Herrero Art Center displays more than 50 artworks across its 17 rooms, with the building itself, as seen from the street, being yet another room,” according to Amparo Roig, partner at ERRE Arquitectura.
Javier Molins, artistic director of the CAHH, has also “thanked the readers of the magazine for this recognition. Hortensia Herrero’s collection is magnificent, but the setting created by ERRE Arquitectura is truly spectacular. It has achieved a dialogue between the city’s Jewish, Roman, and Islamic past and artists such as Olafur Eliasson, Sean Scully, or Anish Kapoor, among others.”