Description
The Poble Espanyol, Spanish Village, is an open-air architectural museum on Barcelona's Montjuïc hill: 117 full-scale buildings copied from towns across Spain, set out as streets and squares in one small village. It houses artisans' workshops, restaurants, a theater and a museum of contemporary art.
You enter through a gate modeled on those of Ávila. Inside, the main square has its own town hall and a church, and the streets wind between Andalusian houses and Galician ones copied from fifteen regions.
At the top stands a monastery made of Romanesque pieces. Many of the buildings now hold workshops where artisans make glass, ceramics, leather and other crafts, and the restaurants and bars make the village lively after dark.
The museum of contemporary art has works by Spanish and international artists. And because the village is built to a human scale, it is easy to explore in an afternoon, and it is close to the Magic Fountain, about 400 meters away.
Behind it are four men and a driver nicknamed "el Santiac", who set off across Spain with cameras and sketchbooks. They covered some 20,000 kilometers and visited about 1,600 places, looking for the essence of each region's architecture.
The idea came from Josep Puig i Cadafalch. The architects Francesc Folguera and Ramon Reventós built it, with the critic Miquel Utrillo and the painter Xavier Nogués, for the 1929 International Exposition. It was built between 1926 and 1929.
The village was meant to last six months, as with most of the fair's pavilions. Visitors liked it so much that it was never taken down.
Only the Canary Islands are missing: there was no budget to go there. The place was first meant to be called Iberona.
The mix is a strange one, with no common style among the regions, yet it works as a harmonious Spanish village in the heart of Barcelona.
You enter through a gate modeled on those of Ávila. Inside, the main square has its own town hall and a church, and the streets wind between Andalusian houses and Galician ones copied from fifteen regions.
At the top stands a monastery made of Romanesque pieces. Many of the buildings now hold workshops where artisans make glass, ceramics, leather and other crafts, and the restaurants and bars make the village lively after dark.
The museum of contemporary art has works by Spanish and international artists. And because the village is built to a human scale, it is easy to explore in an afternoon, and it is close to the Magic Fountain, about 400 meters away.
Behind it are four men and a driver nicknamed "el Santiac", who set off across Spain with cameras and sketchbooks. They covered some 20,000 kilometers and visited about 1,600 places, looking for the essence of each region's architecture.
The idea came from Josep Puig i Cadafalch. The architects Francesc Folguera and Ramon Reventós built it, with the critic Miquel Utrillo and the painter Xavier Nogués, for the 1929 International Exposition. It was built between 1926 and 1929.
The village was meant to last six months, as with most of the fair's pavilions. Visitors liked it so much that it was never taken down.
Only the Canary Islands are missing: there was no budget to go there. The place was first meant to be called Iberona.
The mix is a strange one, with no common style among the regions, yet it works as a harmonious Spanish village in the heart of Barcelona.