Families

One of the most important collections of Catalan Romanesque art in Catalonia can be seen in the Museu Diocesà i Comarcal de Solsona (The Diocesan and Regional Museum of Solsona), located in the Episcopal Palace. As well as making a stop in the medieval period, visitors can take a trip back through time: from the prehistoric era to the modern age.

Most notable in the extensive Romanesque room are the architectural elements that come from the cloisters of the Cathedral of Santa Maria de Solsona: several capitals and an historiated column from the workshop of Master Gilabert de Tolosa.

Also outstanding is the exhibition of Virgin and Child paintings from the 12th and 13th centuries and major examples of pre-Romanesque and Romanesque wall painting from the complexes of Sant Quirze de Pedret and Sant Vicenç de Rus , the paintings on wooden panels from the side of the main altar of the Church of Sant Andreu de Sagàs, the Gothic pabel with the scene of the Last Supper of Santa Constance of Linyà and the altarpiece of Sant Jaume de Frontanyà.

The Diocesan Museum of Solsona was created in 1896 by Bishop Ramon Riu i Cabanes. The aim was the same as for those of the other ecclesiastical museums, such as the Episcopal Museum of Vic, founded 5 years earlier: to preserve the heritage of the diocese and to contribute to the national reconstruction launched by the Catalan Renaixença. All this wealth was endangered with the outbreak of the Spanish Civil war in 1936. For this reason, part of the collection was moved to Geneva and returned to Solsona after the war. The current Museum is the result of renovations carried out in the 1980s.

The Molí de les Tres Eres, the Mill of the Three Ages, formed part of a chain of three water powered flour mills that operated in Cambrils from the 14th century until the late 19th century. After being put to a variety of uses and after years of neglect, finally the old flour mill became the headquarters of the Museu d’Història de Cambrils (History of Cambrils Museum). It currently houses two permanent exhibitions that explain the development of the municipality.

The archaeological exhibition "Cambrils: the origins" takes a historic journey from prehistoric times to the late Roman period, through Neolithic Iberian and Roman objects that come from the various archaeological sites in the town. In particular, the Roman villa of La Llosa. Notable is a lapidary or carved stone with a representation of the adolescent god Bacchus and an oil lamp decorated with a mask, both from the 1st century AD.

Once the mill had been renovated in 2001, a permanent exhibition was opened in the milling room called "El Molí de les Tres Eres: testimoni viu del passat" (Mill of the Three Ages: living testimony of the past). Here, visitors can see the miller’s equipment and machinery and, once a week on the guided tour, the mill is put into operation. After more than 100 years, the mill has not only gone back to grinding wheat and flour, but has also become a living example of pre-industrial heritage.

Horta de Sant Joan, the village in the Terra Alta, which inspired a young Picasso marking it forever, was founded on a rugged landscape in a wonderful position between the Serra dels Pesells mountains and the Parc Natural dels Ports.
 
The origins of the town of Orta (as the town was known until the 19th century) date back many centuries. The archaeological evidence tells of a settlement of the Iberian people, the Ilercavones, in the highest part of the village, while in the mountainous area of Roques de Benet there was the Roman settlement of Bene. In the 8th century the Muslims conquered the area and it was reconquered by the Christians the 12th century. In this period, Horta de Sant Joan had a castle and a walled enclosure, which gave rise to the medieval town that has survived to the present day.
 
Still preserved are the narrow concentric alleys that surrounded the castle, which has now disappeared. The route through the historic centre allows several Gothic (the parish church of Sant Joan Baptista) and Renaissance (the town hall, Casa Clúa, Casa Pitarch and the Casa del Delme) buildings to be seen and to enjoy magnificent views over the mountain of Santa Bàrbara.
 
In year 1898, when Pablo Picasso with just 16 years old, he was invited to Horta de Sant Joan by his fellow student Manuel Pallarès in order to complete his cure from scarlet fever. It was then that the artist’s relationship with the municipality began, one that lasted throughout his life.
 
11 years later, when Picasso was already an established artist, he returned to the village with his partner Fernanda Olivier. The results of this second stay were the Cubist works such as the La Fàbrica and La Bassa, which show the streets and surroundings of Horta. In 1992, the Centre Picasso  was founded, located in the former hospital of the village.

Would you like to feel as you are walking through an English garden, leafy and seemingly uncontrolled? This is the feeling that you’ll get from Parc Nou in Olot, which opened its doors in 1943, when the stately home became a municipal park. Among other things, you can visit a small natural forest of pendunculate oak trees that has been listed as a monumental grove and which has trees of more than 150 years old and 25 metres in height.

Within Parc Nou, there are now twenty plant species. This great diversity and the need to preserve the pedunculate oak grove led to the creation of the Botanical Garden of Natural Vegetation from Olot in 1986. This allows the complexity of the life of rain forest to be viewed. In May 2005, the garden of medicinal plants from La Garrotxa opened to the public.

Also within the park there is the Torre Castanys, also known as Casa Sureda, a modernista building that houses the La Garrotxa Volcanic Zone Natural Park information centre and the Museu dels Volcans (Volcano Museum). The latter explains, through models and interactive technology, the seismic and volcanic phenomena which are so important for the region and an earthquake simulator unique in Catalonia.

In Roman times, with the arrival of spring, the houses were decorated with flowers and herbs. The festivals of the Enramades or bowers continue this tradition, covering the streets with carpets of flowers to celebrate Corpus Christi. One of the most prominent festivals of the Enramades is in Arbúcies, which already appears in documentation from the 16th century and was declared a traditional Festival of National Interest in 1999. It is celebrated during the eight days of the Corpus Christi festival.

In its beginnings, branches were placed in front of the houses, so that the whole street would be covered with garlands made of leaves and flowers. Hence the name "enramades" or bowers. Today the branches and garlands have been replaced by paper and plastic flags. However, what has lasted up to the present day are the carpets of flowers that were used to decorate the streets along which the solemn Corpus Christi procession passed. The women and children would gather flowers from the woods during the vigil and would scatter them on Corpus Christi day itself. During the post-war period (1947), they started to make drawings and designs with the flower petals.

Until the last century, the Festival of the Enramades in Arbúcies had a strong religious flavour. The procession, led by the passage of the Blessed Sacrament, was the main element of the traditional celebration. Since 1977, it has been replaced by a parade with giants, pipers, floats and other festive elements. The main event of the secular celebration is the dance that each district performs in the most representative style.

From discovering bats to exploring the Milky Way. The Granollers Museum of Natural Sciences works towards the conservation, study and dissemination of science around some very diverse subjects: palaeontology, geology, botany, meteorology and, in particular, zoology. And specifically, one of the most important collections it houses is that of butterflies from around the world and tropical beetles.

Visitors can also discover the permanent exhibition of fossils from the late Triassic site of Montseny (250 million years ago), samples from the mining of minerals at Gualba, Matagalls and Vallcarca, and a herbarium of lichen.

Since 1987, the headquarters of the Museum has been an old modernista tower known as La Tela, or the Casa Pius Anfres, to which a new building of more than 2,000 m² was added in 2012, making it one of the leading museums of natural sciences in Spain. The garden that surrounds the complex has a display of botany and geology from the Vallès Oriental region.

In the new facilities there is a space set aside for the firmament. This is the planetarium, with a dome 6 metres in diameter. Here you can see projections of the night sky from both the past and the future!

In addition to these facilities, the Museum also manages the Nature Room at Can Cabanyes, in the Can Cabanyes Nature Reserve, and the Granollers Meteorological Station on Puig de les Forques.

The visit to the Girona City History Museum starts with a look at the building itself. It is a Gothic mansion (15th century) owned by the Cartellà family, which became the Capuchin convent of Sant Antoni in the 18th century. The cemetery, the cistern and the cloister have been preserved from this time. At the end of the 19th century it was converted into a school and finally, in 1981, it was transformed into a museum. In addition, it houses the remains of the wall of the ancient Gerunda and part of the enclosure of the medieval Cal or Jewish quarter.

In all, a journey through the history of Girona which already indicates what the visitor will find on display inside: a chronological journey through the Roman, medieval, modern and contemporary Girona that is completed with a look at various Catalan traditions such as the cobla and the sardana.

Among the most notable exhibits are: the fragment of the pavement mosaic of Can Pau Birol, from 300 AD; the bronze sculpture of the Angel from the Cathedral of Girona, made in 1764 by Ramon Salvatella; modernista and noucentista works by the sculptors, Fidel Aguilar and Ricard Guinó; and posters of political events from the Transition to Democracy in Girona, among other items.

The Museum also manages the air-raid shelter of the Jardí de la Infància, from the Civil War, and the modernista branch of the Agència Gómez.

One of the consequences of the French Revolution was the birth of nationalism throughout Europe. Catalonia did not remain on the sidelines and, in the mid-19th century, the Renaixença began, a cultural movement whose aim was to make Catalan a language of literature and culture and, at the same time, to exalt the history of Catalonia and the idea of patriotism.

Within this context, the Centre Excursionista de Catalunya (Hiking Centre of Catalonia) was formed in 1890 in Barcelona. The founding objective was "to promote excursions around our region in order to make it better known and appreciated, and also to publish papers resulting from these excursions, creating a library and archive". And what better way, in the late 19th century, of documenting these outings than through photography.

The Centre Excursionista collected such a large amount of material that a Photographic Archive had to be created, situated on Carrer Paradís in Barcelona. Currently, it has more than 100 collections (400,000 images) from private donations and bequests. The themes are varied: in addition to landscapes of Catalonia and mountain activities, there are photographs of archaeology, caving, water sports, cycling, boxing, etc. The whole archive is an important historical legacy of Catalonia of the 19th and 20th centuries.

At the same time, the Archive also shows the technical evolution of photography. There are collodion glass plates from the 1860s, silver bromide gelatin plates from the late 19th century, nitrates, stereoscopic plates and autochromes. Also preserved is historical photographic equipment such as cameras, tripods, laboratory instruments and light meters.

The gabella was an old tax levied was on certain essential goods and, by extension, was also used to designate the warehouses where these products were kept. The Gabella is exactly what the 18th-century farmhouse, in the centre of Arbúcies, was called and where you will find the Museu Etnològic del Montseny (Ethnological Museum of Montseny, MEMGA) in the Gabella, a name that already marks an historical past linked to the people and the region. And thus MEMGA, opened in 1985, is dedicated to the preservation, dissemination, research and presentation of the cultural heritage of the Montseny massif.

The visit to the museum encompasses three separate areas. The ground floor is devoted to the first settlers and shows the evolution of the way of life in Montseny: the prehistorical, the world of the Iberians, Romanisation and the Middle Ages. The visitor takes a journey through history where representative objects (some original, some reproductions) are found. A room is dedicated to the Castle of Montsoriu (14th century) with a selection of materials recovered during the archaeological excavations. A large model of the fortress dominates the space.

The first floor focuses on the traditional self-sufficient society, which was based on the agriculture, livestock farming and forestry. It was structured around farms, which were the economic pillar of the 19th century Montseny up until the industrial revolution. Indeed, the top floor of the Museum is dedicated to the changes that the arrival of industry brought to the region. Notable among the collections of the Museum are the displays of artisanal crafts and the beginnings of industrialisation.

Strategically located at the top of the mountain of Montjuïc, the castle, which bears the same name, is an imposing defensive construction that follows the model of star-shaped fortifications. Its current appearance is due to the reformations carried out on the old installations by the military engineer, Juan Martín Cermeño, during the 18th century.

But, beyond its architecture, Montjuic Castle has been the scene of numerous bloody episodes and acts of repression throughout its 400 year history. Currently, the site is the property of the city and has become a symbol of Barcelona.

The origins of the castle date back to 1640, during the Catalan Revolt (the Guerra dels Segadors), when a small fort was built around an ancient watchtower. This was the beginning of the militarisation of the mountain, something which marked its history until the middle of the 20th century.

This small initial fortification was completely renovated and modernised by Juan Martín Cermeño. After the war of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), ownership of the castle passed to the monarchy and a permanent garrison was established. Along with the Citadel, Montjuïc became the guardian of the city of Barcelona.

The renovation led to the demolition of the original fort and the construction of new buildings on an irregular trapezoidal plan adapted to the topography of the mountain, with four bastions at the ends and a covered perimeter path. Cermeño completed the "modernisation" of the facilities with the provision of toilets and water tanks and ordered the construction of the moat.

Throughout the 19th century, the castle once again had a military importance in the repression of insurrectionist movements in the city. Up to 3 times (1842-1843 and 1856) Barcelona was bombarded from the fortress, which was also used to imprison unionists, anarchists and revolutionaries, as well as during the Setmana Tràgica (Tragic Week) of 1909. With the Spanish Civil War the Republican government used the area for similar purposes. Later, the castle instead became a War Memorial to the victors, a military prison and the scene of councils of war (its most political significance was as the site of execution of the president, Lluís Companys).

It became a military museum in 1963. Finally, the Castle passed to municipal ownership in 2007, definitively closing the doors of the museum and taking back the space for the city.