Sant Francesc de Paula, 2
Metro: Urquinaona (L4)
Tel: 93 295 7200
Hrs Jul/ Ag: 10:00-18:00. Hrs: Sep-Jul, 10:00-15:30
Admission: 8€, students/ estudiantes 7€. Call for tickets/ Llamar para entradas

You must go to this amazing concert hall, designed by the Modernist architect, Lluis Domenech i Montaner in 1908, preferably for a performance, but otherwise on a guided tour. The building has a most impressive frontage of colourful mosaic columns (each one of them different), large busts of Bach, Beethoven, Palestrina and Wagner, above which is a mosaic mural of the Orfeo Catalan (Catalan Choral Society) and crowned by a dome. There is a magnificent sculpture on the corner of the buildings encapsulating Catalonian history which is of St. George, patron saint of Catalunya. In 1997 UNESCO named it a world heritage site. Montaner wanted the building to be in strong contrast to the industrialisation taking place, so the whole design was meant to convey the beauty of nature with garlands of flowers on the stained-glass side panels of the main concert hall, stone flower rosettes, patterned floor tiles, multi-patterned mosaic columns topped by peacock fantails and tilted wrought-iron circles of light. The brilliant centrepiece is a stained-glass sunburst, throwing down light from a concealed skylight during the day or electricity at night. The whole building is a riot of colour, shape, form and light, but don't sit at the back if you attend a concert.