Guided tour at the Palau de la Música Catalana

Sunday was the day of the guided tour to the Palau de la Música Catalana. I was feeling so much better and so happy that I could still go, as I didn’t really get to do anything else during
Barcelona Opportunity Week. 

The Palau de la Musica is located in the gothic area of Barcelona, in one of those narrow streets. It's a bit of a shame really, cause the building is so beautiful but it's hard to really see and appreciate it as the building in front is just a few meters away.

 

But hey, you can stand right in front of it and look straight up, and you'll see this: 

And if you have a decent zoom on your camera, with a little luck you'll be able to take in some details 

in the mosaics on the pillars : 

 

...and maybe even get to see the huge mosaic on the very top of the building:

Well well, it was the best I could do. 

It's beautiful on the outside although it's not that easy to see, but just wait till you step inside!

Starting with the stairs leading up to the concert hall, so beautifully embellished   

And then you get into the main hall. I would love to re-tell all the guide told us because this building really is amazing! The design is incredible, the details, the thought behind all of it. But having a memory like a goldfish, and adding the little factor of the presentation being held in Catalan (!!!) I would not be able to. (My Catalan is absolutely nothing to brag about but I did manage to understand some key points here and there, and the guide was so kind to repeat a few things in Spanish as well.)

Just trust me, this place is Ah-ma-zing and if you ever go to Barcelona I highly recommend a visit. Best be during a concert I would say, and the Palau offers more than 300 concerts a year so it should be quite easy to fit in on a trip. It was built with the idea to make a concert-hall for all social classes offering all kinds of music, a place to cater to every taste really. You'll get classical music, opera, piano solists, guitar solists, flamenco, latin music, pop, rock, electronica etc.

In 1997 the Palau was added to the Unesco list of World Heritage and is for now the only
modernistic music hall on this prestigeous list.

The Palau was built between 1905 and 1908, in true Modernistic style. I love how they have been faithful to the original design whenever they have needed to make an upgrade or renovation. Like when they installed air conditioning, they didn’t want it to show so they came up with some kind of system of making small flues through the roses in the roof. 

The sculptures, the mosaics, the lamps, the glass-mosaics, and the reversed glass cupola are simply incredibly beautiful. Please forgive bad quality pictures, flash was not an option..

Here you have a picture taken from the "balcony-seats" :

The incredible inverted stained-glass cupola with natural sun light :

From the "platea" / ground floor:

A reviewer said it well: The visuals alone make music sound different here.

I believe the best tickets are first floor seats, in front of the stage, to really appreciate the magic of the place. The most expensive tickets are down on platea, but there, in my opinion, you lose a lot
of detail of the architecture.

The nearest metro station is yellow L4 Urquinaona, exit Pl. Jonqueres. 

 If you want to read about how/when I discovered Palau de la Musica and see some
real & good pictures, you can click HERE.