"Fontilles was a hidden city, that always needed to be shown". This is the idea that inspires the exhibition Fontilles the hidden city, organized by the University of Valencia. The exhibition opens the doors to this hidden city and invites you to tour it and get to know it through a selection of objects, images, documents, sounds and voices that make up the history of those who lived and cared for the people who resided there.
At the dawn of the 20th century, the towns that followed each other along La Vall de Laguar, to the Marina Alta of Alicante, they saw appear, not without misgivings, the first buildings of a new locality that ended up taking the name of the valley where it was located. Hidden between the mountains and very soon surrounded by a high and thick wall, this new town located in the Fontilles valley grew to become a small town. For a long century, more than 2.000 people lived in Fontilles. There they worked and had fun, they cared and were cared for. As in many other towns, Yeah, but united in this case by a common secret: the malathia of leprosy, that made them different from all the others.
The Fontilles exhibition invites you to learn about a tangible and intangible heritage that has been recovered and preserved thanks to the collaboration of more than eight years between the University of Alicante and the Fontilles Foundation, and the financial support provided by the Sasakawa Health Foundation, now accessible through the Fontilles and leprosy in Spain portal of the Miguel de Cervantes Virtual Library and can be consulted at the headquarters of the Archive of the Provincial Council of Alicante. The exhibition, which can be visited until 22 of June, is complemented by a careful catalog on the hidden city of Fontilles, the space of healthy and sick people and the city today.
