Every town has a Casa de Cultura. This usually houses a small museum and various temporary exhibitions. The one in Pilar de la Horadada, just on the Valencia Community side of the the border with the Murcia Region, is well worth a visit. It’s not easy to find but once you are there, your efforts will have been rewarded. This map should help you! For most of the year it is open from 9am to 9pm with a lunchtime break between 2 and 4.
The museum here is in honour of Gratiniano Baches, the first archaeologist to really study the local area. You can track the development of Pilar from prehistoric neanderthals and their flint tools through to the road building projects of the Roman Empire. There is a section about local agriculture featuring wine making and basket weaving.The coin collection i quite impressive too and will keep numismatists occupied for some time!
Keep an eye out for the temporary exhibitions. Right now you can learn all about the exploits of Major Ramón Franco. He was a seaplane pilot who crashed in the mid-Atlantic whilst trying to fly to South America in 1929. Luckily he was rescued by a British warship. If the name was vaguely familiar, you may be thinking of his rather more infamous brother!
