As a result of the confiscations in the 19th century, a large part of the artistic heritage of the church was dispersed or privatised.With the Catalan Renaixença (Catalonia's cultural renaissance) efforts were made to recover and protect this entire legacy through initiatives such as the Museu de Lleida Diocesà i Comarcal, (Diocesan and Regional Museum of Lleida), founded in 1893, following the example of the Museu Episcopal de Vic. Today, the museum manages an important artistic legacy from the lands of the West and from the ancient Diocese of Lleida, which covers the period from prehistory to the modern age.
In 2007 the new branch was opened that set out the criteria of the site.There are certain outstanding exhibits that must not be missed during the tour of the museum. These include the head of a Roman satyr, altar frontals from the 13th century and sculptural fragments of the Seu Vella. From the Renaissance and Baroque, works by the painter Pere Nunyes, sculptures by Gabriel Joly and Damià Forment and several works by the painter Antonio Viladomat.
Highlights of the permanent collection include two unique pieces: the chess game of 10th -11th century by Sant Pere d’Àger and the Mare de Déu de Bellpuig de les Avellanes, one of the most important examples of Catalan Gothic heritage
The musical heritage of Barcelona and Catalonia is immense, and one of the institutions that has done the most to conserve, study and disseminate it has been the Museu de la Música de Barcelona. Located on the second floor of the Auditorium, it has a collection of 2,000 musical instruments from all over the world and 10,000 sound documents received from legacies and donations. It is considered one of the most important music collections in Spain.
The permanent exhibition invites visitors to experience the world of music and to understand that instruments are the living documents of our past, full of meaning and information related to our musical heritage. On display along the route of the museum are more than 500 pieces, explained through audiovisual, sound and textual resources.
The itinerary for the exhibition enables the visitor to learn about the instruments through the history of music: from ancient civilisations, progressing on to the birth and diffusion of polyphony, Baroque, Classicism and Romanticism, until reaching the new colours and industry of sound in the 19th century and the new styles and new technologies of the 20th century.
String instruments are the most widely represented in the museum, with an outstanding collection of guitars and keyboard instruments. The museum also focuses, deservedly, on wind instruments, as they reflect the important Catalan construction tradition and its use in South American and Asian cultures.
The Museu del Cinema de Girona was created from the exceptional collection of objects related to the world of pre-cinema and the films of Tomàs Mallol made up of 8,000 objects, 10,000 documents (photographs, posters, prints, drawings and paintings), 800 films and 700 books and magazines. Opened in 1998, it became the first museum of its kind in Spain and one of the few existing in Europe./p>
Entering the Museu del Cinema is to embark on a process of discovery. And the permanent exhibition has in the spectator their own point of view. This is not surprising. Throughout history, man has been fascinated by the moving image, from the primitive Chinese shadows until the early years of cinema.
This discovery process is divided into 10 sections plus an audiovisual, which serves as a prologue to the exhibition, and an epilogue that refers to amateur and children's cinema.The main discourse ends in the 1930s, with the arrival of the first televisions.
Thus the visitor gets an educational and entertaining understanding of the workings of magic lanterns, optical boxes, cameras obscura, chronophotography, gadgets for giving movement to the first images (phenakistoscopes, zoetropes, etc.…), projectors... The visitor even gets to be fooled by several optical illusions, which demonstrate that, since ancient times, the most important thing has always been to surprise
The first film exhibition in Catalonia took place on 5th May, 1895 in Barcelona. Almost a century later, in 1981, the Filmoteca de Catalunya, was born, dedicated to the conservation of film and audiovisual heritage and to the dissemination of film culture.
Today, the Filmoteca de Catalunya has a collection of more than 45,000 books, 20,000 graphic archives, 8,000 films, 5,000 sound tracks and 1,200 pieces of original film equipment. It is the result of the work of conservation, restoration, cataloguing, documentation and study of the film heritage of Catalonia carried out by this institution.
However, the best way to get to know the Filmoteca is through exhibitions, publications and film projections, nearly a thousand each year.
After acquiring a first projection room in the street Travessera de Gràcia and more than 20 years at the old Aquitània cinema in Sarrià, in 2012 the new headquarters in the district of El Raval were officially opened. This building, designed by Josep Lluís Mateo is the location for the main display and exhibition areas, a library and a bookstore.
The holdings and film collections are conserved in the other main site of the Filmoteca, the Centre de Conservació i Restauració, located in Terrassa, in the Parc Audiovisual de Catalunya.
The CaixaForum is located in the former fàbrica tèxtil Casaramona (Casaramona textile factory) in Montjuïc, which specialised in the manufacture of blankets and towels. This building designed by Josep Puig is an exceptional example of Catalan industrial "modernista" architecture of the early twentieth century. It comprises a set of single-story buildings, a horizontal construction to facilitate the transfer of goods through a system of internal streets that at the same time also served as a firewall.
The building was acquired by Obra Social "la Caixa" in 1963. In 2002, after a restoration and expansion project, it became a cultural centre for Barcelona. It offers social, cultural and educational programming that includes ongoing events such as lectures, film screenings, performances, concerts and family activities.
In addition, a quarter of the total 12,000 m2 building is occupied by ancient, modern and contemporary art exhibitions. It also has an outstanding collection of artistic and documentary art media.
Since 1988, the Museu de la Vida Rural (Museum of Rural life, MVR) has been showing visitors the characteristics of traditional life in Catalonia, concentrating in particular on the peasantry. It is one of the leading centres of conservation and ethnological research in the country, with a varied collection which allows you to explore the history of the Catalan rural world through a modern and innovative museum project.
The permanent exhibition displays objects related to the peasantry, the arts and artisanal crafts: pieces that represent an authentic cultural basis of our society. The tour is organised by areas of work: those of agriculture, the trades of the village (priest, teacher, cafe owner, pastry chef, spinner, apothecary, barber ...) and the domestic.
The centre, integrated into the Network of Ethnological Museums, forms part of the Lluís Carulla Foundation and is housed in the ancestral home of the Carulla family in L'Espluga de Francolí. The old building was restored and remodelled to accommodate the collection of the Museu de la Vida Rural. In 2010 a new annex building was constructed and the whole of the museum was renovated to accommodate its exhibition scheme in order to facilitate understanding of the rural world from a contemporary perspective.
Located in the foothills of the Serra de Collserola, the Laberint d’Horta (Horta Labyrinth) is a historic park of Barcelona and one of the oldest gardens that remain in the city. Designed in 1791 by Joan Antoni Desvalls, it is made up of 750 metres of trimmed cypress trees and is inspired by the myth of Theseus: whoever makes their way to the centre finds love as a reward.
Desvalls, Marquess of Llupià, Poal and Alfarràs, was a nobleman who loved science, nature and art, passions that came together in the construction of the maze. Following the ideas of neo-classicism and in collaboration with Italian architect Domenico Bagutti, he created a garden with a labyrinth of cypress trees, sculptures and reliefs depicting characters from Greco-Roman mythology who symbolise the different levels of love.
Currently, the park covers an area of 9 hectares and is divided into two parts: the neo-classical garden and the romantic garden. They are noted for their botanical variety and abundance of ornamentation, as well as the architectural elements of the romantic gardens (temples, water channels and sculptures, as well as the Palace of the Desvalls family). Despite not being the refuge of Minotaur, the labyrinth tests the sense of direction of those who enter.
Iesso, located in the present-day town of Guissona, is one of the few Roman cities in Catalonia on which the present-day city has not been completely superimposed. This gives it considerable archaeological potential. In addition, it is one of the most well-documented examples of urban activity that unfolded in Catalonia in 100 BC: a crucial historical moment in which the urban network inherited by our current cities, began to be constructed.
Ancient Iesso was an important inland capital of the empire. About 20,000 people lived there and it occupied twice as much ground as Barcino. In Roman hands, the city experienced 700 years of prosperity, based on agriculture and intense commercial activity. The original town was surrounded by walls and the streets arranged around two axes, the cardo maximus, on a north-south orientation, and the decumanus maximus, running from east to west, following the usual urban plan of Roman cities.
The constructive and commercial activity of Iesso continued up to the Visigothic period (6th century), even though the period that followed the dissolution of the Roman Empire in Guissona was a historic moment of unknown force.
Nowadays, the Archaeological Park of Iesso offers the perfect example in which to discover the development and the transformation of the Roman city over time. Notable are the large public baths, with an advanced system for the circulation of water, the remains of a facility to produce wine and a large manorial house organised around a central courtyard.
During the 14th and 15th centuries, Tortosa was a commercial enclave of the highest order. This splendour can be seen in buildings such as the Cathedral, the noble palaces, the Episcopal Palace, the walled enclosure or the llotja (the exchange). In the 16th century Tortosa was one of the most important cities in Catalonia politically, economically and demographically. It is from this period that the Royal Colleges date, the most important Renaissance complex in Catalonia.
The monumental complex consists of three buildings. The most important thing is the College of Sant Jaume i Sant Maties, from 1564, which started out to educate young Muslim converts. It is a large two-story building organised around a central courtyard – the only Renaissance courtyard in Catalonia - noted for its rich sculptural ornamentation with a strong Italian influence.
The other building is the College of Sant Jordi i Sant Domènec, from 1578. It was originally a Dominican convent, but Francoist shelling (1937-1939) left only the simple Renaissance portal of two buildings standing.
Completing the complex is the Church of Sant Domènec, from 1585. It is a church with a single nave, in Gothic style, with side chapels. Currently the central nave is dominated by the storage-archive from the now disappeared town hall. Since 2008, it has hosted the Renaissance Interpretation Centre.
The Cabdella Power Station, located in the municipality of La Torre de Cabdella, was the first hydroelectric power station in Catalonia. Its gestation was at the end of the 19th century when Emili Riu, journalist and politician from Sort, found a way to take advantage of the large water reserve of the Vall Fosca, which exceeded 50 million m3.
In 1914 the company, Energia Elèctrica de Catalunya (Electricity Energy of Catalonia) put the hydroelectric power station in operation. It was an ambitious plan that took advantage of the waters of the Lake Gento system through a 5 kilometre long canal with an elevation of 836 metres. In addition, they had to install new infrastructure: a funicular railway, access roads, narrow-gauge railways, homes for employees, etc. Even so, the project was finished in just two years.
After a time, the power station was transferred to La Canadenca company (now Fecsa-Endesa). Currently, in one part of the installation, we can find the Cabdella Hydroelectric Museum, belonging to the network of museums of the Museu de la Ciència i de la Tècnica de Catalunya, which appreciates what the power station meant both for industry and also for the region.
