La Palau de la Musica Catalana

While my friends, who were first-timers to Barcelona, went to see La Sagrada Familia, I went to see something new to me: La Palau de la Musica Catalana.  Words cannot express how beautiful this place was.  And unfortunately, my photos do absolutely no justice.  Bummer.  

So back in the late 19th century, some people bought this space of land right in the heart of the old part of the city and decided to build a music hall there.  Because of all the buildings around it, it was a near-impossible task to create a building with natural light.  Yet, somehow, the architect did it.  He wanted the building to reflect not just musical art, but the art of nature, the history (and future of music), the art of culture, and so much more.

There are mosaics all over the whole building, each one showing different kinds of flowers.  This is a ticket window!  What's not to love about a hobbit-hole-sized ticket window?!

Inside, there are stained glass windows everywhere.  Even the ceilings are beautiful.  Goodness.

At the point where the tour guide began to take us towards the music hall, the joy neurons in my brain began to dance and jive and groove.  I just couldn't take in enough of the beauty of this place.  That even the space under each stair was intricately carved.  Wowzah.

Those two guys are sitting on the balcony with their backs to the incredible beauty that their apartment faces.  Unbelievable.

The architect put windows all over the entire building to let in as much natural light as possible.  Every column on the outside of the building is mosaic'd with a different design, and all to look like trees holding the building up.

As if I wasn't mesmerized enough by this point, we then went into the actual music hall.  My oh my.

A huge, multi-colored raindrop sunroof was dripping rainbow light down into the hall.  The architect, knowing that glass accentuates sound (whereas wood absorbs it), lined the walls and the ceiling with glass to create a better acoustic.  No microphones or speakers are necessary in the hall.  The glass magnifies it all...adding visual color to audible beauty.

Names of famous composers, from Catalan and beyond, were listed on the walls.

Our tour guide explained the walls behind the stage, which are part mosaic (the bottom half of the women's dresses), and part sculpture (the top half of the women), to make it look as though the women are coming to life out of the wall while playing music.

The women represent different music styles from all over the world.  Even though the music hall is called the Palace of Catalan Music, they want it to be for the whole world, and thus musicians from all over play there.

This one woman represents flamenco dancing.  So cool.  It looks like she will spin right out of the wall!

It's hard to tell from this photo that the sun roof is like a raindrop, melting down, instead of a dome going upward.  But oh man, look at those colors!

Here you can see how it melts down, and brings so much light and color to the hall.

There were smaller sunroofs all over to keep adding glass and light to the room.  Truly, it made the acoustics unbelievable.  The tour guide spoke at the most intimate level, and yet her voice carried so far!

Add it to my bucket list to see a concert at the Palau de la Musica Catalana.  Some day...