81 / 344
79
prints
, culled from the 1500 or so engravings and lithographs that the museum
possesses.
Along Carrer de Montcada
The street on which the Museu Picasso stands –
Carrer de Montcada
– is
one of the best looking in the city. It was laid out in the fourteenth century and,
until the Eixample was planned almost five hundred years later, was home to
most of the city’s leading citizens. They occupied spacious mansions built
around central courtyards, from which external staircases climbed to the living
rooms on the first floor; the facades facing the street were all endowed with
huge gated doors that could be swung open to allow coaches access to the
interior.Today, almost all the mansions and palaces along La Ribera’s showpiece
street serve instead as museums, private galleries and craft and gift shops, sucking
up the trade from Picasso-bound visitors.
Almost opposite the Museu Picasso, at no. 12, the fourteenth-century
Palau
del Marquès de Llió
used to contain the collections of the Textile and
Clothing Museum, though these have now moved up to the Palau Reial at
Pedralbes. The Carrer Montcada palace will serve as a design archive and
activity centre until the city’s new Design Centre opens in 2011, and the
courtyard
Textil Café
here remains open to the public.
The sixteenth-century Palau Nadal at c/de Montcada 14 houses the
Museu
Barbier-Mueller
(Tues–Fri 11am–7pm, Sat 10am–7pm, Sun 10am–3pm; €3,
first Sun of month free;
T
933 104 516), a terrific collection of pre-Columbian
art.Temporary exhibitions – all beautifully presented – highlight wide-ranging
themes, and draw on a peerless collection of sculpture, pottery, jewellery, textiles
and everyday items, with some pieces dating back as far as the third century BC.
Depending on the exhibition, you’re as likely to see decorated Mongolian belt-
buckles as carved African furniture – there’s nothing restrictive about the term
“pre-Columbian” – and the shop is also worth a browse, with a wide range of
ethnic artefacts for sale.
At the end of the street, in the little Placeta Montcada,
Taller Cuixart BCN
(Tues 5–8pm,Wed–Fri 11am–2pm & 5–8pm, Sat 11am–2pm; €2, free on Tues;
T
933 191 947,
W
www.cuixart.org) is a collection of the works of Catalan artist
Modest Cuixart, co-creator of the influential magazine and art movement Dau
al Set. Four rooms trace the development of his work, from early Surrealism in
the 1940s and 1950s to the sober, abstract landscapes of the 1990s.
Drinking in the atmosphere
Carrer de Montcada features no fewer than three of the city’s most atmospheric
café-bars, all found within a 100m stretch and each with its own distinct character.
In the
Textil Café
(c/de Montcada 12,
W
www.textilcafe.com)there are seats in the
parasol-shaded courtyard of a medieval mansion, or inside under the impressive
stone vaults. Another old mansion, the
Palau Dalmases
(c/de Montcada 20), shows
off its seventeenth-century Baroque remodelling every evening, when it’s open as a
rather grand and very pricey candelit bar – come on Thursday evenings and singers
belt out arias as you sip fine wines under the chandeliers. Finally, there’s a change
of style at the rather more traditional
El Xampanayet
(c/de Montcada 22), a lavishly
tiled, family-run tapas bar near the foot of the street whose speciality is a decidedly
non-vintage “champagne” served with anchovies. All, incidentally, take their lead
from the neighbourhood’s lodestone up the street, the Museu Picasso, and close
on Mondays.
SANT PERE, LA RIBERA AND CIUTADELLA
|
Along Carrer de Montcada