Museum

The Royal Shipyard building, where many of the boats that would set sail during the Medieval and Modern period, are now gathered in the Maritime Museum of Barcelona (MMB). Therefore, there is no better place to explore and learn about the maritime culture and history of Catalonia.

The large gothic naves House the boats of the permanent collection of the museum, such as the Royal Galley, the boat República or the catboat Jean et Marie, going through shipbuilding between the 13th and 18th centuries.  Other pieces of note in the collection are the multiple figureheads that the museum holds and marine instruments such as octants and sextants, mechanical sonar devices, compasses and nautical astrolabes, among others.

The restored Royal Shipyards of Barcelona opened their doors on 16 February 2013, once the restoration was finished for this extraordinary heritage site. The renovation also includes the Museum, which now displays elements that facilitate interactive dialogue, life experience and cross-disciplinary knowledge of maritime culture and history using multiple disciplines.

Three physical elements have marked the development of Santa Coloma de Gramenet: the mountain (Puig Castellar), the river (Besòs) and the city (Santa Coloma).

These three concepts make up the discourse of the Balldovina Tower Museum, a local multi-disciplinary museum inaugurated in 1987, which safeguards the cultural and natural heritage of this city near Barcelona. Starting with the building that it occupies, a defensive tower form the 11th century, which has had different uses throughout history: an agricultural building from the 14th century, a large manor in the 18th century and, finally, the summer residence of the family of the sculptor Josep Maria de Sagarra.

An important part of the permanent exhibit goes back to the origins of the city, linked to the Iberian site of Puig Castellar. You cannot miss the Treasure Room, displaying the most significant Iberian pieces found during excavations. Some are really valuable such as the zoomorphic wrought iron andiron and a sheet of lead with an inscription.

During the tour, you can find out how the Laietani who became established in this area lived: economy, technology, society, writing, beliefs... You can even see the reconstruction of an Iberian house.

The medieval and modern history collection include the collection of coins and ceramics coming from Molí d’en Ribé and Mas Fonollar. Different objects from different professions coming from old establishments in Santa Coloma serve to explain part of the contemporary history of the city.

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.