Library

The politician and writer Victor Balaguer, as a man of the Catalan Renaixença, was convinced that culture was the basis for the people’s progress. For this reason, in 1884, he commissioned the first public building in the country intended to function both as a museum and a library, to be built at Vilanova i la Geltrú, and in which to make his art, book and ethnographic collections available to the public.

Currently, the Museum has a collection of more than 8,000 items that include an archaeological and ethnographic collection donated by some illustrious friends of Víctor Balaguer. The highlight being the mummy of a child from ancient Egypt, popularly known as Nesi.

As regards to the art exhibits, part of the original collection can be seen in the Pinacoteca (art gallery) room which recreates the atmosphere of the Fine Arts salons of the 19th century. Pictures by Marià Fortuny, Ramon Martí Alsina, Joaquim Vayreda and Joaquin Sorolla show the bourgeois tastes of the time. Complementing this room are the works by El Greco, Ribera, and Rubens, donated at the beginning by the Prado Museum.

The tour continues through Modernisme, Post-modernisme and Noucentisme with small-format works by Santiago Rusiñol, Ramon Casas, Anglada Camarasa, Francesc Domingo and Xavier Nogués. It also has the most comprehensive collection of informalist art in Catalonia that comes from the first Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art.

As for the bibliographic collection, it is one of the richest of the 19th century in Catalonia, with more than 50,000 books and a total of 100,000 documents. Among these are the collected letters of Víctor Balaguer.

The history of Catalan bibliography cannot be understood without the task of acquisition, preservation and dissemination of collections with immense literary, artistic and scientific interest that the Biblioteca de Catalunya (The National Library of Catalonia) has held since its creation in 1907.

Notable amongst its holdings of approximately three million items, are the collection of nearly 20,000 manuscripts and 500,000 letters. There we find medieval marvels such as the Homilies d'Organyà (13th century), the Llibre de l'orde de cavalleria (Book of the Order of Chivalry), by Ramon Llull and the four great Chronicles; or seminal modern manuscripts such as the Oda a la Pàtria (Ode to the Motherland), by Bonaventura C. Aribau (1833), or L'Atlàntida, by Jacint Verdaguer.

Also notable are the newspaper and sound archives, as well as the graphic collections, with prints, drawings, maps and photographs, from the 16th century until the present day.

The Biblioteca de Catalunya also manages the Frederic Marès Book Museum, consisting of more than 1,500 documents that the collector gave to the institution. And also the Joan Maragall Archive, housed in the former residence of the poet.

From 1939, the Biblioteca de Catalunya has been based in the Antic Hospital de la Santa Creu in Barcelona, one of the most important complexes of 15th century Gothic civil architecture in Catalonia. As a result of the merger of several medieval hospitals in Barcelona, it was for many centuries the largest health facility in the country.