Fundació Miró
Category: Museums/Galleries
Location: Montjuïc
Address: Parc de Montjuïc, s/n, 08038 Barcelona, Spain.
Phone: 934 439 470
Fundació Miró
The Miró Foundation was a gift from the
artist Joan Miró to his native city and is one of Barcelona's
most exciting showcases of contemporary art. The airy, white
building was designed by Josep Lluís Sert and opened
in 1975; an extension was added by Sert's pupil Jaume Freixa
in 1988. Miró's unmistakably playful and colorful style,
filled with Mediterranean light and humor, seems a perfect match
for its surroundings. Look for Alexander Calder's mercury fountain.
Miró himself rests in the cemetery on Montjuïc's
southern slopes. When he died in 1983, the Catalans gave him
a send-off amounting to a state funeral. COST: EUR5. Tues.-Wed.
and Fri.-Sat. 10-7, Thurs. 10-9:30, Sun. 10-2:30.
Gaudí Casa-Museu
Category: Museums/Galleries
Location: La Rambla and the Raval
Address: Parc Güell (up hill to right of main entrance),
Barcelona, Spain.
Phone: 93/219-3811
Gaudí Casa-Museu
Gaudí lived with his niece from 1906
to 1926 in this pink, Alice-in-Wonderland house, now a house
museum. Exhibits include Gaudí-designed furniture, decorations,
drawings, and portraits and busts of the architect. COST: EUR3.
May-Sept. daily 10-8; Oct.-Feb. daily 10-6; Mar.-Apr. daily
10-7.
Museu Picasso
Category: Museums/Galleries
Location: Sant Pere, La Ribera, La Ciutadella and Barceloneta
Address: Carrer Montcada 15-19, Barcelona, Spain.
Phone: 93/319-6310
Museu Picasso
The Picasso Museum is across Via Laietana, down
Carrer de la Princesa, and right on Carrer Montcada - a street
known for Barcelona's most elegant medieval palaces. Picasso
spent several of his formative years (1901-06) in Barcelona,
and this collection, while not one of the world's best, is particularly
strong on his early work. Displays include childhood sketches,
pictures from the beautiful Rose and Blue periods, and the famous
1950s Cubist variations on Velázquez's Las Meninas (Ladies-in-Waiting).COST:
EUR4.50; free 1st Sun. of month. Tues.-Sat. 10-8, Sun. 10-3.
Palau de la Música Catalana
Category: Museums/Galleries
Location: Sant Pere, La Ribera, La Ciutadella and Barceloneta
Address: Sant Francesc de Paula 2, Barcelona, Spain.
Phone: 93/268-1000
Palau de la Música Catalana
One of the world's most extraordinary music
halls, with facades that are a riot of color and form, the Palau
de la Música (Music Palace) is a Barcelona landmark.
From its polychrome ceramic ticket windows on the Carrer de
Sant Pere Més Alt side to its overhead busts of (from
left to right) Palestrina, Bach, Beethoven, and (around the
corner on Carrer Amadeus Vives) Wagner, the Palau is a flamboyant
tour de force. Designed by Lluís Domènech i Montaner
in 1908, it is today considered the flagship of Barcelona's
Moderniste architecture. If you can't attend a concert, take
a tour of the hall, offered daily at 10:30, 2, and 3 (in English)
for 700 ptas./EUR4.21. Ticket office: (just off Via Laietana,
around a corner from the hall itself).
The Barbier-Mueller Museum
of Pre-Columbian Art
This is the only museum in Europe devoted exclusively to Pre-Columbian
cultures. Housed in a gothic palace, its collection is one of
the finest of its kind and gives visitors an insight into the
rich world of the earliest cultures on the American continent.
This tiny, intimist museum contains some one hundred pieces,
including wood and stone sculptures, ceramics, tapestries, jade,
an archaeological ensemble often found in international exhibitions
and prestige publications. The collection is structured around
the human groups which inhabited the territory between Mesoamerica
and South America before the arrival of the Spanish. The cultures
represented include the Olmec, Maya, Aztec, Chavin, Mochica
and Inca civilisations.
The Barbier-Mueller Museum of Pre-Columbian Art
Opening hours
Tuesday to Friday from 11am to 7pm (groups by prior arrangement
after 10am)
Saturday from 10am to 7pm.
Sunday and public holidays from 10am to 3pm.
Closed on Monday (except public holidays)
Admission free on the first Sunday of the month from 10am to
7pm.
Admission
3 € General
1,50 € Students, pensioners, unemployed, large families,
etc.
2 € Groups of more than 10 people
Under 16 years old, free access
Barcelona: Places of Interest
La Rambla
Five separate streets strung end to end, La
Rambla (also called Las Ramblas) is a tree-lined pedestrian
boulevard packed with buskers, living statues, mimes and itinerant
salespeople selling everything from lottery tickets to jewellery.
The noisy bird market on the second block of La Rambla is worth
a stop, as is the nearby Palau de la Virreina, a grand 18th-century
rococo mansion, with arts and entertainment information and
a ticket office. Next door is La Rambla's most colourful market,
the Mercat de la Boqueria. Just south of the Boqueria the Mosaic
de Miró punctuates the pavement, with one tile signed
by the artist. The next section of La Rambla boasts the Gran
Teatre del Liceu, the famous 19th-century opera house. Below
the Plaça Reial, La Rambla becomes decidedly seedy, with
strip clubs and peep shows. La Rambla terminates at the lofty
Monument a Colom (Monument to Columbus) and the harbour. You
can ascend the monument by lift. Just west of the monument,
on Avinguda de les Drassanes, stand the Reials Drassanes (Royal
Shipyards), which house the fascinating Museu Marítim.
It has more seafaring paraphernalia than you'd care to wag a
sextant at - boats, models, maps, paintings, ships' figureheads
and 16th-century galleys.
Barri Gotic
The Barri Gotic contains a concentration of
medieval Gothic buildings only a few blocks northeast of La
Rambla, and is the nucleus of old Barcelona. It's a maze of
interconnecting dark streets linking with squares, and there
are plenty of cafes and bars, as well as the cheapest accommodation
in town. Most of the buildings date from the 14th and 15th century,
when Barcelona was at the height of its commercial prosperity
and before it had been absorbed into Castile. Around the Catedral,
one of Spain's greatest Gothic buildings, you can still see
part of the ancient walls incorporated into later structures.
The quarter is centred around the Plaça de Sant Jaume,
a spacious square, the site of a busy market and one of the
venues for the weekly dancing of the sardana. Two of the city's
most significant buildings are here, the Ajuntament and the
Palau de la Generalitat.
Museu Picasso
The Museu Picasso is Barcelona's most visited
museum. It's housed in three strikingly beautiful stone mansions
on the Carrer de Montcada, which was, in medieval times, an
approach to the port. The museum shows numerous works that trace
the artist's early years, and is especially strong on his Blue
Period with canvases like The Defenceless, ceramics and his
early works from the 1890s. The second floor shows works from
Barcelona and Paris from 1900-1904, with many of his impressionist-influenced
works. The Portrait of Senyora Canals (1905), from his Pink
Period is also on display. Among the later works, all executed
in Cannes in 1957, are a complex technical series (Las Meninas),
which consists mostly of studies on Diego Velazquez's masterpiece
of the same name.
La Sagrada Familia
La Sagrada Familia is truly awe-inspiring -
even if you don't have much time, don't miss it. The life's
work of Barcelona's favourite son, Antoni Gaudí, the
magnificent spires of the unfinished cathedral imprint themselves
boldly against the sky with swelling outlines inspired by the
holy mountain Montserrat. They are encrusted with a tangle of
sculptures that seem to breathe life into the stone. Gaudí
died in 1926 before his masterwork was completed, and since
then, controversy has continually dogged the building program.
Nevertheless, the southwestern (Passion) facade, with four more
towers, is almost done, and the nave, begun in 1978, is progressing.
Some say the shell should have been left as a monument to the
architect, but today's chief architect, Jordi Bonet, argues
that the task is a sacred one, as it's a church intended to
atone for sin and appeal to God's mercy on Catalunya.
La Pedrera
Another Gaudí masterpiece, La Pedrera
was built between 1905 and 1910 as a combined apartment and
office block. Formerly called the Casa Milà, it's better
known now as La Pedrera (the quarry) because of its uneven grey
stone facade that ripples around a street corner - it creates
a wave effect that's further emphasized by elaborate wrought-iron
balconies. Visitors can tour the building and go up to the roof,
where giant multicoloured chimney pots jut up like medieval
knights. On summer weekend nights, the roof is eerily lit and
open for spectacular views of Barcelona. One floor below the
roof is a modest museum dedicated to Gaudí's work.
Montjuic
Montjuic, the hill overlooking the city centre
from the southwest, is home to some fine art galleries, leisure
attractions, soothing parks and the main group of 1992 Olympic
sites. Approach the area from Plaça d'Espanya and on
the north side you'll see Plaça de Braus Les Arenes,
a former bullring where the Beatles played in 1966. Behind it
lies Parc Joan Miró, where stands Mir?'s highly phallic
sculpture Dona i Ocell (Woman and Bird). Nearby, the Palau Nacional
houses the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, which has an impressive
collection of Romanesque art. Stretching up a series of terraces
below the Palau Nacional are fountains, including the biggest,
La Font Màgica, which comes alive with a free lights
and music show on summer evenings. In the northwest of Montjuic
is the 'Spanish Village', Poble Espanyol. At first glance it's
a tacky tourist trap, but it also proves to be an intriguing
scrapbook of Spanish architecture, with very convincing copies
of buildings from all of Spain's regions. The Anella Olímpica
(Olympic Ring) is the group of sports installations where the
main events of the 1992 games were held. Down the hill, visit
masterpieces of another kind in the Fundacio Joan Miro, Barcelona's
gallery for the greatest Catalan artist of the 20th century.
This is the largest single collection of the his work.
Tibidabo
At 542m (1778ft), Tibidabo is the highest hill
in the wooded range that forms the backdrop to Barcelona. If
the air's clear, it's a great place for views over the city.
The locals come up here for some thrills at the amusement park
Parc d'Atraccions, which has rides and a house of horrors. As
hair-raising as anything at the Parc, however, is the glass
lift that goes 115m (126yd) up to a visitors' observation area
at Torre de Collserola telecommunications tower. The more sedate
can find solace in Temple del Sagrat Cor, Barcelona's answer
to Paris' Sacré Coeur; it's even more vilified by aesthetes
than its Paris equivalent. Looming above Tibidabo's funicular
station, it is actually two churches, one on top of the other.
The top one is surmounted by a giant Christ and has a lift to
the roof.
