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engraving, weaving, pottery and other crafts. Inevitably, it’s all one huge
shopping experience – castanets to Lladró porcelain, religious icons to
Barcelona soccer shirts – and prices are inflated, but children will love it (and
you can let them run free as there’s no traffic).Your ticket also gets you entry
to the
Fran Daurel Col.leccío d’Art Contemporani
museum so you
might as well drop in to see the minor Tàpies and Miró lithographs and the
series of Picasso ceramics.
Get to the village as it opens if you want to enjoy it in relatively crowd-free
circumstances – once the tour groups arrive, it becomes a bit of a scrum.You
could, of course, always come at the end of the day, when the village transforms
into a vibrant centre of Barcelona nightlife.Two of Barcelona’s hippest designers,
Alfredo Arribas and Xavier Mariscal, installed a club in the Ávila gate in the
early 1990s (the
Torres de Avila
). Other fashionable venues followed and, this
being Barcelona, the whole complex now stays open until the small hours.
Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya
The towering, domed
Palau Nacional
, set back on Montjuïc at the top of the
long flight of steps from the fountains, was the flagship building of Barcelona’s
1929 International Exhibition. Partly the work of Pere Domènech i Roura (son
of the more famous Lluís Domènech i Montaner), its massive frescoed oval hall
hosted the opening ceremony of the Exhibition, providing a fittingly grandiose
backdrop for the city’s biggest show since the Universal Exhibition of 1888.The
palace was due to be demolished once the exhibition was over, but gained a
reprieve and ultimately became home to one of Spain’s great museums.
The
Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya
(
MNAC
;Tues–Sat 10am–7pm,
Sun & hols 10am–2.30pm; €8.50, ticket valid 48hr, annual pass €14, first Sun of
the month free;
T
936 220 376,
W
www.mnac.cat) is the city’s most renowned
art experience, showcasing a thousand years of Catalan art in stupendous
surroundings. For first-time visitors, it can be difficult to know where to start,
but if time is limited it’s recommended that you concentrate on the medieval
collection.This is split into two main sections, one dedicated to Romanesque art
and the other to Gothic – periods in which Catalunya’s artists were pre-eminent
in Spain. The collection of Romanesque frescoes in particular is the museum’s
pride and joy, and is perhaps the best collection of its kind in the world. MNAC
also has impressive holdings of European Renaissance and Baroque art, as well as
an unsurpassed collection of “modern” (ie nineteenth- and twentieth-century)
Catalan art up until the 1940s – everything from the 1950s and later is covered
by MACBA in the Raval. In addition, there are priceless collections of Catalan
photography, drawings and engravings, and a numismatic section, items from
which are either displayed as part of the general collection or sometimes appear
in
temporary exhibitions
(separate admission charge, varies), which change
every two to four months. Finally, there’s a
café-bar
, gift shop and art
bookshop
in the gloriously restored oval hall, and a superior museum
restaurant
called
Oleum
(Tues–Sun lunch only) on the upper floor with views over the city.
The Romanesque collection
Great numbers of Romanesque churches were built in the Catalan Pyrenees as
the Christian Reconquest spread. Medieval Catalan studios decorated the
MONTJUÏC
|
Museu Nacional
d’Art de Catalunya