BARCELONA HIGHLIGHTS
We will begin this itinerary with a panoramic visit to the marine city front, we will arrive at the Gothic district where we will make a walking tour, religious centre with the Cathedral, built during centuries XIII to XV above the old Romanic cathedral. By right hand, through a fragment of the Roman wall edge, the Bishop Street led us to San Jaime Square, political centre of Catalonia. Here is the Generalitat Palace on one side and the building of the City Council, to the other.
We will cross through the King of Barcelona Street where remarkable medieval buildings are located.
We will get the bus and we will go to the Batlló House. It is a building designed by the architect Antonio Gaudí, located in Grace Avenue, that crosses the modernist Ensanche District, called “Manzana de la Discordia” because it lodges in addition to this building, the works of the modernist architects like the Amatller House, that is contiguous to the Gaudí building, work of Puig & Cadafalch and the House Lleó Morera, work of Domènech & Montaner.
We will follow until the Pedrera, this building also called Milà House was constructed between 1906-1910.
Finally, we will arrive at the Sagrada Familia, who is the great church in Barcelona, designed by the architect Antonio Gaudí, still in construction. Its complete name is Expiatory Temple of the Sagrada Family. The Sagrada Family is the masterpiece of Gaudí, the maximum exponent of the Catalan modernist architecture.
PICASSO’S BARCELONA
In order to follow the Picasso steps in Barcelona, we must begin in carrer de la Plata where he had its first factory in 1896, with his friend and colleague Manuel Pallarès. Afterwards he moves to another one in carrer dels Escudellers Blancs in the heart of the Gothic District.
The old part of the city was a swarm of cultural life at that time, and Picasso submerged in it with all his energy. It is saying that one of its streets: Avinyó, populated with women, was his inspiration for his first cubist work, Les Mademoiselles d'Avignon.
The centre of all that Bohemian life was, without doubts, Els Quatre Gats, a brewery inspired on a famous Parisian coffee. There they had news about the vanguard movements that caused rage in the French, capital: the impressionism, the symbolism, the work of Toulouse-Lautrec.
In 1900, Picasso already makes in this bar his first independent exhibition, still somewhat with informal character. The Parés Gallery is the first one in which Picasso exposes seriously in 1901. The exhibition was not great successful due to the style of his work, too realistic for the taste of the cultural bourgeoisie of that moment. This first failure impels him to his great step: Paris, where he moved definitively in 1906 to never return to Barcelona.
Following the tracks of Pablo in Barcelona, we must arrive until the Picasso’s Museum located in the Aguilar Palace. Through more than 3,600 works that conform the permanent collection keeps awake the genius of the young artist. However, the Picasso Museum is also the testimony of his bond with Barcelona.
To the conclusion of the visit return to the Port or Hotel.