Contemporary art in Barcelona is MACBA. The Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona stands at the heart of the Catalan capital in a Richard Meier building that is itself a work of art. It is located in touching distance of the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB), an reference point for lovers of 20th and 21st century art and culture.
MACBA, which was started in 1995, has established itself internationally as a model in contemporary art. Its collection of 5,500 works, allows a journey to be traced through the main artistic references of today. Beginning with materic abstraction from the 1950s, incorporating works of the European pop art and of the avant-garde of the 1960s and '70s. There are also works around the photographic figurative representation and minimalist sculpture.
Among the most important pieces you can see: Dins el roig, by Albert Ràfols-Casamada; Between the Frames: The Forum, by Antoni Muntadas; La saison des pluies II, by Miquel Barceló; Rinzen, by Antoni Tàpies; Beschwingte Bindungen, by Paul Klee; Thames Circles, by Richard Long, and Atomic Kiss, by Joan Rabascall, among others.
With 42 painted figures and 260 other images carved into the rock, La Roca dels Moros del Cogul, in Les Garrigues, is one of the most outstanding and best-conserved rock-art sites in Catalonia. Amongst the most outstanding scenes depicted are a hunting scene and a phallic dance, an exceptional representation of a ritual event, which lends credence to the idea of the cave being a place for religious practices.
This area of Les Garrigues has been inhabited continuously by humans since the Paleolithic period and the cave was used for about 5000 years as a place of worship. The last hunter-gatherers (8th - 5th millennium BC) left behind paintings known as Levantine art. Later, from the 5th- 2nd millennium BC, Neolithic groups covered up the reliefs in the rock to draw representations of their own beliefs (diverse representations that fall within the classification of schematic art ). Researchers have also identified later inscriptions from the Iberian and Roman periods, though many are illegible.
The MHC is a museum designed to stimulate interest in the evolution of Catalan culture. In the Palau de Mar, one of the few conserved buildings of the old port of Barcelona, visitors follow a thought-provoking story that is divided into eight stages, starting in prehistoric times and finishing in the present day to, and taken from a social, economic, political and cultural point of view.
During the tour, you will find objects and documents, historical recreations and audiovisual and interactive scenes, which in an entertaining way, illustrate the history of this nation.
The visitor even gets the opportunity to climb onto the horse of a Lord in the war of the Middles Ages and hide in a trench of the Civil War.
The Palau de la Música Catalana and the Hospital de la Santa Creu i de Sant Pau, works of the architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner, are two emblematic buildings of Catalan modernista architecture. Located in the city of Barcelona, they were built in the early years of the 20th century and have been on the Unesco World Heritage list since 1997.
The two buildings are good examples of modernista architecture, an artistic movement that arose in Europe in the late 19th century and which, in Catalonia, and especially in Barcelona, became widespread.
Both the Palau de la Música Catalana and the Hospital de la Santa Creu i de Sant Pau are public buildings in which tradition and modernity are fused together. They show a significant renewal of traditional techniques and the incorporation of new architectural solutions. To their architectural value is added beauty and decorative exuberance, becoming works of universal artistic and historical significance.
These constructions masterfully display the essence of modernisme and the period in which they were built: beyond the artistic side, he represented an ideological movement, based on the modernisation of the country and the search for an identity in a historical context in which civil society, especially the bourgeoisie, became the most loyal sponsor.
The Museu d’Arqueologia de Catalunya (MAC) is organised around its 6 regional centres (Barcelona, CASC, Empúries, Girona, Olèrdola and Ullastret). Of them all, Barcelona is the centre that offers a more cross-cutting view because it explains the social, technological, economic, and religious developments from early man up to the middle ages in Catalonia and the Mediterranean.
Located in the former Pavelló d'Arts Gràfiques, (Graphic Arts Pavilion), built for the 1929 Universal Exposition of Barcelona, the MAC Barcelona renovated 11 rooms between 2010 and 2013. The permanent exhibition, consisting of more than one million original pieces, takes the visitor on a journey through pre-history, protohistory, the Greek and Phoenician colonisation and the establishment of the Roman Empire.
To accompany the visitor, there are learning resources, pictures, scenery and also audiovisual pieces such as the funeral rituals of prehistoric times compared with those of today.
One of the most emblematic pieces of the museum is the statue of the Roman God Aesculapius, now a reproduction because the original was moved to the Empúries centre in 2008. Other notable exhibits include the Paleolithic materials, the 53,200 year-old Neanderthal jaw from Sitges, the Iberian treasure of Tivissa, the Phoenician votive figures, Greek ceramics and the Roman statue found in the street Carrer Paradís, and considered to be the highest quality sculpture recovered from ancient Barcino, the Roman name for Barcelona.
Integrated into the Regional Network of the Museu de la Ciència i de la Tècnica de Catalunya, the Ecomuseu-Farinera at Castelló d'Empúries has, from 2004, explained the story of the men and women of the region dedicated to the cultivation of the wheat grain and the various uses of the flour.
The building of la Farinera offers a tour of the Catalan industrial flour heritage. The machines, tools and structures exhibited are testimony of an activity that has developed since medieval times: first in the old flour mill, and from the end of the 19th century to 2001, at the modern flour mill factory.
The visit to the Ecomuseum is completed with a route that follows, up to the Pont de la Mercè, part of the five kilometres of the Rec del Molí (mill irrigation channel). This hydraulic infrastructure drove water from the weir at Vilanova de la Muga to the flour mill, skirting around and supplying the orchards and fields. Upon arrival at the flour mill, the water turned a Francis turbine from 1905, which was responsible for generating the energy necessary for the operation of the factory.
Empúries is the only archaeological site in the Iberian Peninsula where the remains of a Greek city Empòrion coexist with those from the Roman city, Emporiae. It is also the gateway to the classical culture: Ten centuries of history that transformed, forever, the ancient Iberian peoples that inhabited it.
The first settlement of the Greeks was in the 6th century BCE on a small island off the coast of the Gulf of Roses (Palaia Polis, ancient city), and then moved to the mainland to establish what was known as the Neàpolis, the new city. In 218 BCE, the port of Empúries was used as an entry point to the peninsula for the Roman troops in their fight against the Carthaginian army. Between the 6th century BCE and the 5th century AD, Empúries has been a port, a commercial enclave, a western colony of Greece, the first Roman encampment on the peninsula, a prosperous Roman city...
The current Greek ruins belong to the city from the Hellenistic period. During the visit there we would find the precincts Asclepius and Serapis, the small industry which produced canned fish and sauces, the Agorá or public square and the remains of the floor of a banqueting room with an inscription in Greek.
Notable from the Roman period is the Domus 1 with the mosaics that decorated the ground, the Insula 30 (area occupied by the city’s public baths), the Forum, the remains of the Basilica and the Curia and the tabernae or shops.
Half way along the route you can visit the Museum of the Empúries excavations which houses the exceptional original sculpture of Asclepius found at the site.
It is therefore a privileged space for understanding the evolution of the Greek and Roman urban development and is a turning point in the history of the Iberian Peninsula. Currently it is one of the sites of the Museu d’Arqueologia de Catalunya (Archaeological Museum of Catalonia).
