Palau de la Música Catalana: A Garden of Stone and Glass
Why is it significant?
Tilt your head back on the corner and let the building flood over you: brick, mosaic columns like stalks of flowers, busts of composers on the balcony, and on the corner a great stone sculpture of figures crowding around a young woman, with Saint George, the patron of Catalonia, standing guard…
Key Facts
| Place | Palau de la Música Catalana: A Garden of Stone and Glass |
|---|---|
| Address | Carrer del Palau de la Música 4-6, 08003 Barcelona, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 41.38760, 2.17520 |
| Part of Walk | Young Picasso's Barcelona: Els Quatre Gats, La Llotja & the Merchant Streets of La Ribera |
| Generated | Generated |
Tilt your head back on the corner and let the building flood over you: brick, mosaic columns like stalks of flowers, busts of composers on the balcony, and on the corner a great stone sculpture of figures crowding around a young woman, with Saint George, the patron of Catalonia, standing guard above them. It is almost too much for such a narrow street... and that is exactly the point.
The Palau de la Música Catalana was built between 1905 and 1908 by the architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner for the Orfeó Català, a choral society founded in 1891. This was not a hall for opera-going aristocrats. The Orfeó was a choir of ordinary people, clerks, shop assistants, workers, singing Catalan folk songs, and the building was meant to be their home. The corner sculpture by Miquel Blay is called, quite simply, the Catalan popular song.
Inside, which you can only see with a visit or a concert ticket, the hall is lit by daylight through walls of stained glass, and from the ceiling hangs an inverted dome of golden and blue glass, like a sun melting downward. Around the stage, eighteen muses emerge from the wall, their bodies in mosaic, their heads and shoulders in sculpted relief, playing instruments that seem to float. Many people describe it as the only concert hall in Europe that can be lit entirely by natural light during the day.
When it opened in February 1908, Picasso was already gone. He had moved to Paris for good in 1904, and he was busy inventing a very different kind of modern art. The Palau is the Barcelona he left behind: ornamented, romantic, proud of its Catalan roots. In 1997 it was added to UNESCO's World Heritage list.
Notice how hard it is to see the whole façade. Domènech had to fit a cathedral of music into a medieval plot, so the street itself became the foyer. From here, head south and east, crossing Via Laietana, towards the old market with the strangest roof in the city.