Museums of Barcelona

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

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

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

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