The Monastery of Santa María la Real de las Huelgas in Burgos, founded in 1187 by Alfonso VIII and Leonor Plantagenet was used during the 13th and 14th centuries as the pantheon for the Castilian royal family. Their tombs were opened between 1942 and 1944 in the name of scientific research, providing what is to date the best collection of medieval fabrics and civil clothing in the world, both in quantity and quality. The importance of this collection, unique in its genre, is incalculable, so much so that the Museum of Medieval Fabrics, located in the Monastery itself since 1949, was declared a Historic-Artistic Monument by decree on 1 March 1962, being the only section of Patrimonio Nacional that enjoys this status by itself, regardless of the building that houses and exhibits it.
This collection is an invaluable source of knowledge for a multitude of aspects related to the history of medieval thought and society. Its importance for the history of art is also very clear, because the Huelgas fabrics constitute genuine reference pieces for the study of artistic motifs and fabric techniques and the use of dyes, as well as helping the chronological dating of pieces from other collections. It has also been very useful in the fields of epigraphy and heraldry, because it shows how complex this had already become at that time. Likewise, this group is fundamental from the point of view of the history of fabric techniques in Europe and, by extension, in the west, since Andalusia was the route through which silk weaving techniques arrived from the East.
