Families

How does a Barça player feel when he is about to go out onto the field? Lovers of football can experience that here in the flesh at this museum. Currently it is one of the most visited museums in Catalonia, with an annual average of more than 1,200,000 people.

The idea to make a Barça Museum was by Joan Gamper, the founder of the club. It was finally inaugurated in the year 1984. Since then, visitors have been able to see the trophies won by all the sporting sections of the Catalan club throughout its history and all kinds of objects related to the team, the players and the followers.

It also has a sport art collection, with works by Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, Antoni Tàpies and Josep Maria Subirachs. Additionally, it holds the Futbolart Collection, owned by Pablo Ornaque, considered to be one of the best private collections in the world concerning football.

Starting in the year 2010, the Camp Nou Experience project began, a tour that places the visitor in a leading role using immersive technologies (video walls, touchscreens, audio, recreations, etc.). Apart from the museum, you visit the Stadium, the Messi Area and the Multimedia Area. During your visit, you can go through the locker room tunnel and transport yourself to a big final or photograph a replica of the European Cup in the press room.

What did it mean to live along the Upper Border of Al-Andalus and the Catalan counties? The Noguera Museum explains how the county was impacted socially, ideologically and culturally, and especially the city of Balaguer, which preserves one of the most important heritage sites of Catalonia and one of the benchmarks of the peninsula.  

Using the archaeological materials exhibited, it shows the nature of the culture of the Andalusian world, set apart from the feudal world represented by the county of Urgell. And in 1105 the count of Urgell conquered Balaguer and this would be a turning point for the city.

Of note in the collection are the remains coming from the site of Pla d’Almatà from the Andalusian era. They allow us to build a story on how life was in the Muslim quarter (“medina”) of Balaguer from its origins to the 8th century, when it was a military camp, until it became a prosperous city where Muslims, Christians and Jews lived together. You can see ceramics, a basin and even surgical or cosmetic tools from this time period.

The museum also dedicates an area to the hisn (castle) of Balaguer which represents the centre of power, both in Andalusian times and in the era of the counts. It shows the plasterwork that decorated the Taifa palace (11th century), one of the few sites with Islamic architecture in that period in the Iberian peninsula. It also shows some decorative and domestic items from the period in which the hisn became the palace of the counts of Urgell. 

The Terrassa Museum explains the evolution of the territory and the human occupation of Terrassa and its region, from its origins to modern times, using a collection of more than 26,000 objects. One of their peculiarities is that not everything is concentrated in a single building. To see the art, archaeological collections and decorative art, you need to visit six historic places in the city.

First stop: the medieval castle of Castell Cartoixa de Vallparadís, turned into a museum in 1959, which hosts the permanent exhibit of the Terrassa Museum. This starts by explaining the natural environment, prehistoric times and the ancient world. You can see a shell bracelet from the late Neolithic era (Cova del Frare), a Roman signaculum (Can Colomer) or a reconstruction of a burial on tegulae. This is precisely how the lead sarcophagus from between the 2nd and 4th centuries was found in Ca n’Anglada, which is also part of the exhibit.

Then you can discover Medieval Terrassa with some original objects such as the Romanesque carving of the Virgin Mary from Sant Cugat. The last room explains everything about rural life and the Industrial Revolution in the contemporary city. You can even go into a post-civil war home!

The extensions of the Terrassa Museum bring visitors to the Palace Tower and Cultural Centre of the Medieval Village of Terrassa (12th century), the Cloister of the Convent of Saint Francis (17th century), the Casa Alegre de Sagrera (19th century, but reconverted into a bourgeoisie home during the modernist period) and also the Seu d’Ègara, the most exceptional heritage element of Terrassa.

Joan Vila Cinca, Pere Quart, Josep Renom... Sabadell in the beginning of the 20th century was boiling over artistically and culturally and the first fine arts and archaeology collections in the city started to get organized. From there arose the need to create a local museum. In the year 1931, the Museum of the City opened its doors and, starting in 1970, it was definitely established as the Sabadell History Museum, an obligatory stop to learn about the origins of the Vallès plains.

The museum is located in the factory home of the industrialist Antoni Casanovas, erected in 1859. This is a multi-disciplinary museum, which includes local archaeological, historic and ethnological collections.

In the permanent exhibit, visitors can discover how the first prehistoric communities in the area lived, using materials between 6,500 and 2,600 years old such as the variscite necklace which was part of the burial objects of a Neolithic tomb (found in the site of Bòbila Padró - Can Tiana). You can even go inside the reconstruction of a prehistoric hut!

The tour continues by showing the footprints that the Iberians and the Romans left on the region (don’t miss the mosaic from the 2nd-3rd centuries A.D., with the image of the god Neptune, coming from the Roman villa of La Salut). Finally, it focuses on the collections connected with the manufacturing of wool and the textile industry, which turned Sabadell into a big industrial city.

The museum also has 13 areas on different periods which complete the story and the experience of the city’s history.

This museum is the best homage of the city of Reus to one of its most well-known natives: the doctor and prehistorian Salvador Vilaseca Anguera (1896-1975). During his life, he gathered an extensive archaeological paleontological collection that is a unique testimony on the first cultures that inhabited the county of Baix Camp and its neighbouring territories.

The museum was inaugurated in 1984 at the Old Bank of Spain, a neoclassic building that stands out due to its corner in the form of a tower. Inside, the permanent exhibit shows materials that cover the lower Palaeolithic era to the Medieval Muslim occupation of this territory (the 8th century).

Even though the old Vilaseca collection is the basis of the archaeological content, it also has pieces from other origins such as deposits, donations or more recent excavations. During your tour of the museum, you can admire fossilized remains of animals from the Quaternary period coming from the Barranc de la Boella ravine (more than 500,000 years old), pieces from the Neolithic burial cave called Cau d’en Serra or a bronze buckle found in a burial site in Antigons.

One of the most well-known pieces is the representation of a young deer, engraved over a small plate of llicorella (fine slate) with a flint chisel. It is one of the most ancient (about 10,000 years old) and most beautiful examples of Prehistoric portable art found in our country.

What happened in Mataró since the era of the flamboyant city of Iluro? This is what the Mataró Museum explains at its headquarters. Their objective is to safeguard and spread the archaeological, natural and movable heritage linked to the capital of the county of El Maresme.

Its headquarters are in Can Serra, the old manor of Jeroni Serra Arnau, built in 1565 and with a Renaissance style. On the inside, you can see a permanent exhibit that runs a path from Iluro to now, through Medieval times and modernity. It is worth it to stop at two significant pieces from the city’s Roman past: the sculpture of Venus d’Iluro and the Portrait of Faustina Minor.

While going through the museum, you can see a small part of the foundation accompanied by models and audiovisual material. The museum’s collections are very diverse: archaeological materials, natural specimens, historical objects and a pictorial art collection including a series of engravings by Goya.

One of the extensions of the museum is the Archaeological Enclosure of Llauder Tower, a site with the remains of a Roman villa from the end of the 1st century B.C. Another one of their headquarters corresponds to another time of splendour for the city. It is the small nave of Can Marfà, a symbol of the industrial past of Mataró. It hosts a permanent exhibit which shows more than a century of objects connected with the industry of knitting, one of the most important collections in Europe in this speciality.

Also part of the Mataró Museum is the Ca l’Arenas art centre. It was born from the legacy of the artist Jordi Arenas Clavell in his native city and it especially focuses on local artistic activity. 

Ethnology is more than just a set of pieces. The objects are the starting point allowing visitors to interpret their social surroundings. This is the main premise of the current Ethnology Museum of Barcelona, fully renovated in 2015.

It began in the first decade of the 20th century, when a group of pioneering intellectuals in Catalan ethnology saw the need to preserve and interpret traditional societies. Ultimately, two institutions were opened, the collections of which would form the foundation of the Ethnology Museum of Barcelona: the Museum of Popular Arts and Industries (1942) and the Ethnological and Colonial Museum (1949). They collected and exhibited objects from the five continents. Currently a part of this collection can be seen in the Museum of World Cultures.

After its latest remodelling, the Ethnology Museum of Barcelona is now focused on the Catalan area, but without forgetting its relationship with other communities and cultures. The main hub is the permanent exhibit “Sentir el patrimoni” (Feel the Legacy).

The central space of the room is occupied by six large objects (a boat, a wine press, a loom, a blacksmith blower and an herbal cabinet) which symbolize six thematic areas that make up all cultures. They are surrounded by other pieces that show the peculiarities and the universality of human culture. A whole side of the room is made up of a large frieze of objects of different geographic, historic and thematic origins.

The exhibit has audiovisual resources and multimedia content and even an area where visitors can touch certain pieces. It is also recommended to visit the two inner patios. In one of them, visitors can see the two giants of the city of Barcelona, Queen Violant and King James I, created by Domènech Umbert in the year 1984.

Murals, painting on wood, sculpture, textiles, clothing, documentary collections, metalwork, objects for the liturgy, etc. The current collection of the Museu Diocesà d'Urgell (Diocesan Museum of Urgell) is a reference point of sacred art in which the Beatus de Liébana particularly stands out, one of only two copies in Catalonia of the work that the Abbot Beat, from the Monastery of Liébana, wrote at the end of the 8th century, commenting on the Book of Revelation.

Curiously, the Museum grew out of a temporary exhibition that took place in 1957 with the pieces from the Cathedral Treasury. Such was the success of the exhibition that it was made permanent and the collection was expanded with pieces from throughout the diocese in the Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque styles and from the 19th century. Among these acquisitions there are treasures such as the Papal Bull of Pope Sylvester II.

In 1969, the Church of la Pietat (annexed to the Cathedral of Santa Maria de la Seu d'Urgell) was adapted to house the Museum. This space brought its own works to the collection such as the Pieta altarpiece and the Dormition group, made by the sculptor Jeroni Xanxo.

One of the most significant works of the collection is El retaule dels Goigs de la Verge (The Altarpiece of the Joys of the Virgin), from Abella de la Conca. It is by Pere Serra and dates from the 14th Century. In addition to its artistic value, it has a history of white-collar theft behind it. It was stolen in 1972 and, after a long journey, was recovered six years later in New York.

Frederic Marès, in addition to being a sculptor, developed a passion for collecting from a very early age. Over a period of more than 80 years, he assembled a large number of works of art (particularly sculpture) and more than 50,000 objects. In 1944, he gave his collections to the city of Barcelona which exhibited the collection two years later at the Museu Frederic Marès (Frederic Marès Museum), located in the former Royal Palace of the Counts of Barcelona.

In the basement and on the first two floors the collection of Hispanic sculpture from ancient times until the 19th century are concentrated . One of the jewels in the crown is L’aparició de Jesús als seus deixebles al mar (The Appearance of Jesus to his Disciples at the Sea), attributed to the Master of Cabestany, a masterpiece of the Catalan Romanesque which came from the monastery of Sant Pere de Rodes. Sculpture of the Spanish Renaissance and Baroque periods are also well represented. To a lesser extent, other artistic collections are on display (painting, metalwork, furniture and textiles).

Also displayed in the same building are the objects that Marès had collected: dolls, clocks, fans, pipes, playing cards, daguerreotypes, pharmacy jars, tin soldiers, etc. This area is known as the Gabinet del col·leccionista, or the Collector’s cabinet (Marès called it the Sentimental Museum). The visitor can take a tour through 17 rooms, in which the thousands of curious and endearing objects have been brought together which reflect the life and customs of the past, especially from the 19th century.

Finally, those who wish to delve more deeply into the figure of Frederic Marès can visit the study/library of the artist. This space has a set of sculptural works by Marès, which he himself chose to display to the public, as well as a number of personal items.

From archaeological finds from the Neolithic age and the Roman era, up to contemporary paintings, as well as Baroque carvings and modern paintings. The Museu Comarcal de Manresa (Manresa Regional Museum) is thematically multidisciplinary and the collections it has on display focus on the art and history of Manresa, Bages and Catalonia.

It began with a project in 1896, although it was at the end of the 70s that the museum took on the shape it has today. Located since 1940 in the old school of Sant Ignasi, the Museum is located within the area of influence of Ignatius of Loyola, near the Cova de Sant Ignasi (Cave of Saint Ignatius) and the Gothic church of Santa Maria (La Seu). The building is a large mansion built around a neoclassical courtyard.

During the tour, the visitor will find archaeological objects ranging from the Neolithic up to the Romanisation of the area, a collection of medieval pottery decorated in green and purple of the fourteenth century and Baroque polychrome carvings of the 17th and 18th centuries. In 2014, an area devoted to Antoni Viladomat i Manalt was opened, thanks to the loan of 12 works from MNAC (National Museum of Catalan Art).

It is worth stopping in the area of modern and contemporary art where you will find an important collection of dioramas and paintings by Josep Mestres Cabanes, a designer at the Gran Teatre del Liceu, and paintings and engravings by Alfred Figueras. A room is devoted to the artistic works of the Garriga-Mir Arts Foundation.

The Museum also has a multi-sensory module called "La Mirada Tàctil" (The Tactile Look), a tactile interpretation to make the visit as accessible as possible.