Top 10+ Attractions in Barcelona for Couples Who Love the Arts

La Rambla ends with the Columbus Monument (built for the 1888 Universal Exhibition) at the sea end. It’s equipped with an elevator taking visitors to a gallery at the top which allows for a nice view over the harbor and La Rambla.

The Port Vell Harbor, where the Columbus Monument is located, is also home to one of the largest and best designed Aquariums in Europe. We particularly enjoyed the underwater tunnel which features sharks of various sizes as well as many other marine species.

Whether you’re planning a honeymoon or a romantic getaway for the weekend, keep in mind that the best months to visit Barcelona are May, June, and September.

Now on to architecture and various arts in Barcelona!

Poble Espanyol was designed by architects Francesc Folguera i Grassi and Ramon Reventós i Farrarons. Its construction took thirteen months. The village was never meant to last beyond the Exhibition itself, but it was so popular that the people of Barcelona decided to preserve it.

The Spanish Village now offers more than just great walks. There are cafés and concert venues, and many shops selling crafts. I have bought a few necklaces here, and they are quite special. You can also watch artisans make glass sculptures.

The monastery was founded by King Jaime II and his wife Queen Elisenda de Montcada in 1326, and inaugurated a little over a year later, in 1327, when the building was almost in its present form: a third story was added to the cloister galleries in the 15^th century.

From the 14^th century up to 1983, when Pedralbes Monastery was open to the public as a museum, the place was home to a community of Clarissan nuns. Nuns of the Order of Saint Clare still live at Pedrables, in a modern extension.

The museum at Pedralbes exhibits works of art and various liturgical objects. We missed many of them because we arrived late, close to closing time. As always when you travel, it’s a great idea to check museum opening hours as you make some sort of plan for the day. Even so, as was our case with this museum, you will discover gems along the way and arrive unprepared in some form or another.

Barcelona Cathedral, located in the Barri Gòtic (Gothic Quarter) was built between the late 13^th century and the 15^th century, with elements, such as the Neo-Gothic facade, added in the 19^th century. It’s dedicated to the Holy Cross and St. Eulàlia. The latter is one of the two patron saints of Barcelona. She was tortured in thirteen different ways during the times of Roman Emperor Diocletian for being a Christian. When she died, she was only 13. Her remains rest in a sarcophagus in a crypt of the Barcelona Cathedral since the 14^th century. As some form of testament to her purity, 13 white geese are lovingly kept in the cloisters of the Cathedral.

A visit to the cloisters of the Barcelona Cathedral is truly special for anyone with a passion for the way built space can affect mood, create tension and emotion, and invite to reflection.

Every Sunday at noon (edit: and on holidays -- see deanie's comment below) locals gather in the Plaça de la Seu in front of the Cathedral to dance the sardana. They gather their purses and jackets and whatever else encumbers them in front of a circle, join hands, and start dancing a rather slow dance in a meticulous fashion. There is also a small band, called a “cobla,” providing the music. Anyone can join in, but I advise you to first try to practice the steps on your own, or you may throw off the whole circle.

I had a lot of fun trying to dance the sardana, with my friend filming my steps. It would have been even more fun for me if my friend had danced with me, but she appeared to have fun watching me. If you’re going as a couple in Barcelona, this is one experience not to miss. It’s a great way to spend not just a few minutes, but a whole hour, taking in the serenity of the people from all walks of life and all ages joining each other in dance.

The sardana is the main traditional dance of the Catalans and represents their pride and their unity across social markers such as gender, age, and class.

Also on Sundays in Plaça de la Seu you will find sellers of coins and stamps, and various trinkets and knickknacks. I often visit such fairs here in Bucharest, and enjoyed looking at artifacts in Barcelona because they spoke so much of Spanish history. I particularly enjoyed some old books, postcards, and religious items, as well as some sweets and perfumes.

Disseny Hub Barcelona (Design Hub Barcelona) is a combination of four design museums: for the decorative arts; textiles and Spanish fashion; graphic art and typography; and ceramics. It’s currently in the process of being relocated to a new building in Plaça de les Glòries, so it’s closed for the moment (March 2013).

If you read this at a later date and are interested in decorative arts and design, don’t miss Disseny Hub. It’s rather interesting. I especially appreciated their collection of furniture, with various kinds of inlaid (intarsia) woodwork or with inset engraved plaques, Art Nouveau designs, etc. The Textule and Fashion museum was also especially interesting. I’m showing below two images:

-- dresses from Barcelona, 1900-1910; silk-figured taffeta trimmed with velvet and lace

-- platform shoes from 1500-1600, called (in English) chopines. Made of silk velvet, leather, and cork. Chopines, lifting the feet from the soil sometimes 50 cm (20 in.), were originally designed to protect women’s shoes and long garments from street mud.

You’ll see beautiful Art Nouveau sculptures and trencadís mosaics (made with pieces of broken tiles) as well as amazing stained glass, starting with the majestic skylight in the form of an inverted dome. Also, the acoustics is great (try to make it to a concert there if you can). We listened to a Bach piece that the tour leader played on the organ with the help of a remote.

This museum is a must for anyone interested in medieval art in particular. I found many pieces of interest, but unfortunately my old camera captured them blurry, so I’m not showing them here. One of my favorite pieces was Mare de Déu de Ger. (Note that the museum labels are written only in Catalan.)

The collections of MNAC are housed in the Palau Nacional, located on Montjuïc (Jewish Mountain) hill. You can get there on one of the tour bus lines. The place offers a great view over Barcelona. Apparently there’s also a Magic Fountain (Font màgica) close-by, with waters raising and falling under lights that change color. There’s also music. The fountain is closed on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays.

If you don’t have much time in Barcelona and favor contemporary art over medieval art, then be sure not to miss the MACBA. It has a nice permanent exhibition and great temporary shows as well. Some of the highlights are Edward Ruscha’s Sunset strip, a film of Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty and his notes on the "Movie Treatment for Spiral Jetty," Internationale Situationniste magazines, and others. There were also two temporary exhibitions on show when we visited in 2010, Rodney Graham and John Baldessari. We highly enjoyed both.

You can also find on Montjuïc the Joan Miró museum, which is not to be missed. Whether you’re a fan of modern art or not, you’ll find things to entertain, educate, and inspire you. Take for instance a painting with two black dots and a curved line, called “Hair pursued by two planets.” Or a partially-burned painting, where you can see the cross-shaped wooden support at its back. There’s a lot of modern art’s inventiveness at play in the works displayed. I encourage you to see this museum. It will give you and your (travel) partner many things to talk about and joke about, since modern art in the hands of Miró is at times very serious but often quite jocular and funny.

The Barri Gòtic (Gothic Quarter) is wonderful for anyone interested in the architectural feel of a medieval town.

You’ll also find here several important attractions, some of which I have covered in this article (Barcelona Cathedral, Palau de la Música Catalana), and some of which I haven’t (the Church of Santa Maria del Mar, which we visited and enjoyed, the Barbier-Mueller Museum of Pre-Columbian Art, which I wish we had visited, and others). Take time to stroll through the narrow streets and enjoy the squares. You’ll find busking musicians. One night we also came across a pantomime show mounted on a makeshift stage in one of the squares.

The Picasso Museum is pretty amazing. You’ll find here an expressive portrait ("Hombre con boina") in bold colors, done when he was only 13, works from 1897-1900, when he was under the influence of Art Nouveau and Toulouse-Lautrec, works from his Blue Period and Rose Period, Cubist paintings, his Las Meninas Series (based on the painting by Velázquez), ceramics (I loved them), and more. Most of all, however, I enjoyed the early Picasso, his formative years. This museum has the best collection of his early works.

It's worth getting a good camera for your trip. I recommend a model released in the summer of 2011, because it's great value for the money: Canon SX40 HS (see below).

It's a 12.1MP camera that shoots 1920x1080 Full HD and 1280x720 HD video at 30 frames per second. It also has a 35x optical zoom! It begins at 24mm wide-angle and goes up to 840mm in 35mm film equivalent, which is a really large telephoto lens.

If you want a slim compact camera, get a high-end one that can capture RAW images. I now have a Canon PowerShot S110. This one is also 12.1 MP, and it shoots Full HD video, just like the SX40 HS. However, Canon S110 does only a 5x zoom, starting with the same wide angle of 24mm. Its range is the 35mm film equivalent of 24mm to 120mm.

Both have a high ISO and all sorts of great features. I recommend them both, but if you want to travel light and think you might not need a telephoto lens, I'd say get the S110!

You most likely know what they are: Park Güell, La Pedrera (Casa Milà), Casa Battló, and, of course, La Sagrada Família.

Park Güell

With its gingerbread-like houses at the entrance, its famous mosaic dragon, its slanting colonnade "La Ola" and other structures, Park Güell seems to be lifted out of a fairy tale. It is, indeed, and enchanting space. Besides the architectural features and the vegetation, you will find here a museum dedicated to Antoni Gaudí, who built this park between 1901 and 1914 for Eusebi Güell, and anglophile and admirer of the English "garden city" movement.

Casa Milà, Casa Battló, and the Sagrada Família are part of the modern Eixample (meaning “extension”) district of Barcelona, laid out in the second half of the nineteenth century following the plans of Ildefons Cerda.

Casa Milà (La Pedrera)

With its stone facade undulating like so many waves and the wrought-iron balconies (designed by Josep Maria Jujol) suggestive of algae, Casa Milà, nicknamed La Pedrera (“stone quarry” – its raw-looking facade was made of limestone from Vilafranca, a town 60 km from Barcelona) is one of the first examples of biomorphic, if not really organic, architecture. We visited there a museum which explains Gaudí’s structures: the relationships between structural work (besides masonry, Gaudí also uses a steel frame to support the building), facade and terrace in La Pedrera, the structural system of the central nave of La Sagrada Família, etc. You’ll see models and illustrations of Gaudí’s catenary arches. You should also climb up to the rooftop, where you’ll see some iconic images for Barcelona: chimneys that look like stormtroopers from Star Wars.

I’m reading you can also see Gaudí memorabilia and visit one apartment while at La Pedrera, but we have missed that. There’s also a collection of modern art paintings and Renaissance drawings.

La Pedrera, a corner building, folds around two interior courtyards. One of them has a staircase decorated with an ornate ironwork banister as well as with painting in pastel colors, with human and floral flowing forms (the latter on the wall to the side as well as above the staircase).

Casa Milà was built between 1906 and 1910 and completely finished in 1913. It was commissioned by a wealthy couple, Pere Milà i Camps (lawyer, industrialist, and politician) and Roser Segimon (the widow of José Guardiola, who had made his fortune in Latin America).

Inside the building, the theme seems to be that of the sea and sea creatures: there’s a lot of blue, waves, jellyfish, fossils, etc. By the way, there are no straight lines in Casa Battló. (The same is true of Casa Milà.)

To learn more about Casa Battló, you can buy a great guide at the local gift shop. There are also audio guides available. I have enjoyed both. Please, don’t be discouraged by the high-priced tickets (20.35 euros for adults / 16.30 euros for students, as of today, March 22, 2013; but you get a book of coupons when you pay for the bus tours -- I think you get a discount for Casa Battló as well).

Gaudí’s Casa Battló is a redesign (1904-1906) of a building built between 1875 and 1877. Textile industrialist Josep Battló i Casanovas bought the place in 1900. His family lived on the "noble floor" of the building until the 1950s.

When he died in 1926, after having been run over by a streetcar, the church was still a construction site. And so it is today, 87 years later. Some expect the building to be completed by 2026, when the city will celebrate a century since the birth of “God’s Architect.” Others say it won’t be finished until 2030.

When finished, the Sagrada Família will have 18 towers, grouped as follows, in ascending order of height: 12 for the apostles, 4 for the Evangelists, one for the Virgin Mary, and finally, a tower for Jesus Christ.

I’m told La Sagrada Família offers great views over Barcelona. It so happened that we didn’t get to see any. We’ll have to return in 2026 (or 2030)!

The Top 10 Barcelona guide book also comes with a wonderful plastified, small but comprehensive (remember those large unwieldy maps? This is not one of them) and extremely useful map of Barcelona, which includes a map of the metro.

Enjoy Barcelona! (That's Barna to the locals, or, well, BCN.)