Tourist Attraction in Barcelona:
Palau de la Música Catalana

Palau de la Música Catalana is the seat of Orfeó Català, a choral company of Catalonia. It is located in Barcelona, ​​Spain, and is open to visitors all year round. It is an important example of Catalan modernism and has been conceived as a garden of music. The history of Palau is related to that of the choral society that still uses it for its concerts and initiatives. It is also home to the Orleo Català singing school. It was designed at the beginning of the century by Lluís Domènech i Montaner. The designated area to host the Palau is in the district of Sant Pere in a street adjacent to Via Laietana; Palau's first stone was placed in 1905 and it took three years to finish the whole building (1908); the palace was considered to be unanimously the symbol of the new Catalan modernist architecture, which the creator had long sought for a synthesis. of a six-storey adjacent building where the changing rooms, library, archive, meeting room, and offices were located. In order not to take light of the palace, a small square was built on the left side of the building, which cost the slaughter of a wing of an adjacent church at Palau. Palau's architectural innovations are many: conceived as an open space, usable, to live full, includes among the materials used for the construction of glazed glass and crystal. The same input is an indicative example: designed not to block the look, does not hinder the internal structures of the staircases and other environments that remain visible. Outside, the Palau looks like an unusual and prominent architecture due to a certain sobriety of surrounding buildings. On the main façade, after restoration work there is no more entrance to the original foyer, there is a double colonnade above the door that carries a rich and complex series of bows and balconies. The decoration of the columns is mosaic with non-casual floral motifs: a precise reconstruction of the Catalan flora is in fact the leitmotif of all the decorations. The concert hall is rectangular with semi-elliptical seating and has a unique peculiarity in the world: it has a skylight and wide side windows that allow it to be used even in the absence of artificial light. The floral motifs and colors used in the stained glass windows and furnishings allow comparison with an artificial garden, of which the skylight is the sun. The entire surface of the ceiling is adorned with white and pink ceramic roses. The stage, on which there is an organ of 1908, is decorated with female statues playing musical instruments; this renders the use of set-tops and embellishments unsuitable for use in the concerts. Several sculptures adorn the interior of the hall and Palau's façade. There are two sculptural groups in the room, one depicting a group of girls singing a Catalan ballad, and the other featuring Richard Wagner's Valkyrie Cavalcade. Externally, located at the hub of the building, placed above what was the entrance of the carriages there is instead a sculptural group dedicated to the characters of the popular Catalan songs.

Attractions in Barcelona