El Carreró, 17
You are now facing Mataró Museum, a facility created in 1894. If you want to get to know the city’s past, we recommend you visit it. It is a history museum housed in a building full of history.
The manor’s name, Can Serra Arnau, refers to its owner Jeroni Serra Arnau, an honourable bourgeois from Mataró and the first town trustee in the General Courts of the Crown of Aragon.
The property has a ground floor, a first floor and attic. It is a typical Renaissance building, with a symmetrical composition on the façade and classical architectural elements.
In the centre is the half-point portal, where on one of the stone voussoirs, and under the Serra Arnau coat of arms, you can read the year of construction: 1565. The door is flanked by two windows decorated with wrought iron grilles.
On the first floor, the residential part of the house, the windows are framed by mouldings, pediments, and grooved columns. Under the roof are the small windows of the attic.
The interior still retains remnants of the old structure, elements not very typical of a museum, such as the wide entrance from where the stairs lead to the first floor or the large central room, around which are the former bedrooms. And the noble room still retains the original wood trim.
Can Serra is one of the few examples of sixteenth-century civil architecture in Mataró. To prevent its loss, in 1915 the town hall bought the building for the Museum, which after many refurbishments was opened in 1942.
