A new historical narrative of Casa de la Vall

In 2023, the Consell General decided to push forward with a restoration of Casa de la Vall and a renovation of its urban surroundings. In parallel with the construction work, a renovation of the parliamentary building's museum was also initiated, a process to which Andorra Research + Innovation has been associated from the very beginning and has ultimately contributed significantly.

Beyond the initial contributions to help guide and frame the scope of the renovation, AR+I's main contribution has been to conceive and ground a new historical narrative for Casa de la Vall. Thus, a heritage-focused narrative was avoided, and instead, a narrative centered on the political function of Casa de la Vall as the seat of the Andorran parliament was adopted. With the leitmotifs of the action of speaking (parliament as a place where people speak, Andorra's history as a result of multiple political conversations) and also of the keys (the seven keys of the parliament's archives, but also the keys that explain Andorra's improbable survival for centuries), the new narrative of the Casa de la Vall exhibition aims for visitors to understand, in a experiential way, who met at Casa de la Vall, who they represented, what they did within those walls, and how their decisions have contributed to the country. The goal is to tell the story of the house, the parliament, and the country in an integrated way, with a single narrative thread but using different approaches to reach different types of audiences.

In addition to this, from AR+I we have also made other contributions to the new Casa de la Vall museum project:

• We participated in the musealization of all the rooms of the new exhibition, and we directly handled the creation of the exhibition panels and interactive screens, we wrote the texts that served as the starting point for the scriptwriters of the audiovisuals and audio guides, and we participated in the Casa de la Vall museology and museography monitoring group to ensure its historical rigor.
• We wrote the exhibition catalog.
• We participated in creating and developing the temporary exhibition “Casa de la Vall, domus concilii,” which was on view from spring 2024 to 2025 and served to introduce this new narrative ahead of the house's closure for renovations.
• We contributed to the design of the renovation of the Casa de la Vall surroundings, proposing symbolic elements related to the balance that Casa de la Vall represents (balance between parishes, between territory and population, between institutions) and to the place it occupies as a meeting space for the councillors of the entire country (proposing to identify seven different access points to the house's surroundings).