The Rough Guide to Barcelona 8 (Rough Guide Travel Guides)

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egg shapes. Outlandish sculptures and statues adorn the square and facade and
it gets even crazier inside, where the walls of the circular courtyard are ringed
by stylized mannequins preparing to dive from the heights – below sits the
famous Rainy Cadillac, where you can water the snail-encrusted occupants of a
steamy Cadillac by feeding it with coins. In the MaeWest Room an unnerving
portrait of the actress is revealed by peering through a mirror at giant nostrils,
red lips and hanging tresses, while elsewhere there’s a complete life-sized
orchestra, some of Dalí’s extraordinary furniture (like the fish-tail bed), and
ranks of Surrealist paintings – including one room dominated by the ceiling
fresco of the huge feet of Dalí and Gala (his Russian wife and muse). The
museum also contains many of Dalí’s collected works by other artists, from
Catalan contemporaries to El Greco, and there are temporary exhibitions, too,
while your ticket also allows admission to see the Dalí-Joies – a collection of
extraordinary jewels, designed in the Forties for an American millionaire and
displayed here with Dalí’s original drawings.
Practicalities
Trains depart hourly from Barcelona Sants and Passeig de Gràcia and take up to
two hours to reach Figueres, depending on the service. Currently, the 7.45am,
9.25am or 10.25am from Sants (each taking 1hr 40min) are the best day-trip
options.Alternatively, Figueres is just thirty to forty minutes by train from Girona,
if you feel like combining the two towns.Arriving at the train station, you reach
the centre of town simply by following the “Museu Dalí” signs (10min).The main
Turisme is at the top of town on Plaça del Sol (July–Sept Mon–Sat 9am–8pm,
Sun 9am–3pm; Aug–June Mon–Fri 10am–2pm, Sat 10am–2pm & 3–6pm, Sun
10am–2pm; T972 503 155, W , in front of the post
office building.
A gaggle of tourist restaurants is crowded into the narrow streets around the
Dalí museum, and there are more cafés and restaurants overlooking the rambla.
To eat with the locals seek out Can Jeroni, c/Castelló 36 (T972 500 983; closed
Sun), a tiled tavern with country-style dishes and grills, or the L’Ou d’Or,
c/Sant Llatzer 16 (T972 503 765, W closed Sun), where an
Surreal Salvador
Salvador Dalí i Domènech (1904–89) was born in Figueres – you can see the
exterior of the house he was born in at c/Monturiol 6 (there’s a plaque) and that of
the next house in which the Dalí family lived (at no. 10). He gave his first exhibition
in the town when he was just fourteen and, after a stint at the Royal Academy of
Art in Madrid (he was expelled), he made his way to Paris, where he established
himself at the forefront of the Surrealist movement. A celebrity artist in the US in the
1940s and 1950s, he returned eventually to Europe where, among other projects,
he set about reconstructing Figueres’ old municipal theatre, where he had held his
first boyhood exhibition. This opened as the Museu Dalí in 1974, which Dalí then
fashioned into an inspired repository for some of his most bizarre works. A frail man
by 1980, controversy surrounds the artist’s final years, particularly after he suffered
severe burns in a fire in 1984, following which he moved into the Torre Galatea, the
tower adjacent to the museum. Spanish government officials and friends fear that, in
his senile condition, he was being manipulated. In particular, it’s alleged that he was
made to sign blank canvases – and this has inevitably led to the questioning of the
authenticity of some of his later works. Dalí died in Figueres on January 23, 1989. His
body now lies behind a simple granite slab inside the museum.
OUT OF THE CITY
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Figueres and the Dalí
museum