Museums in L'Eixample (Barcelona)

Fundació Joan Miró

Created by Joan Miró as an institute for the study of contemporary art, it was built by his close friend and architect Josep Lluís Sert. Its outstanding octagonal tower houses a concert hall that's used as an auditorium for classical music performances. The permanent collection includes Miró's art in all formats: large canvases, tapestries, everyday objects, engravings, photographs and more. The Fundació also organizes temporary exhibitions and has a café-restaurant and souvenir shop. The hours of operations may vary according to the months, kindly visit the website for further details of the same.

Casa Museu Gaudí

Casa Museu Gaudí is the house where Antonio Gaudí spent much of his life, from 1906 until 1926. The building was designed by his colleague Francesc Berenguer in a modest style, which suited Gaudí's spartan way of life. However, the pergola in the garden was designed by Gaudí himself, who was also responsible for the furnishings, along with some of his pupils like Josep Maria Pujol. It's just one of the fantastic range of Modernist buildings you'll find in the magical and amazing Parc Güell. The park itself is an artistic masterpiece that includes many of Gaudí's own brilliant works and those of his main collaborators. Check website for the exact hours.

Fundació Antoni Tàpies

The artist himself, Antoni Tàpies, created this centre in 1984 as a place to study contemporary art, and today its library has become one of the most important of its kind in the world. It exhibits a large collection of his beautiful drawings, paintings, sculptures and engravings and organizes regular temporary exhibitions as well. The building that dates back to 1880, is the work of modernist architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner, and it was the headquarters of the prestigious publishing house, Editorial Montaner i Simón until the 1970s. Look up, above the entrance to see one of Tàpies's avant-garde sculptures.

MNAC Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya

The National Museum of Art, built in 1990, houses the best collection of Romanesque murals in the world including some real gems from the Pyrenean region. The museum's collection includes other works of art such as altarpieces, carvings, sculpture, gold and silver ornaments, also paintings on wood and glazed objects. You can see a selection of Gothic period paintings by 14th and 15th-century Catalan School artists along with those of their counterparts from the rest of Spain and Europe.  Also, in their collection there are great paintings and sculptures by some master painters of the earlier centuries. Moreover, the vast collection has contributions from other museums, like Thyssen Bornemisza to name one.

Fundación Francisco Godia

Francisco Godia, a Catalan collector is an art enthusiast and has managed to build up an outstanding collection that includes paintings, sculptures and pottery dating from the Middle Ages to the present day. It's all on permanent display at the Fundación Francisco Godia. The outstanding pieces are the Romanesque sculptures, the pottery collection and some unique paintings by the Catalan artist Ramón Casas and the Italian Lucio Fontana among others.

La Pedrera-Centre Cultural Caixa Catalunya

Antoni Gaudí's La Pedrera is probably the most famous work of Catalan Modernist architecture. Start your tour at the top, in the Espai Gaudí, where you'll find models and video films that show and explain all his buildings. From here, you can also get to the interesting roof-top terrace with its excellent views of the Eixample between the phantasmagoric army of chimneys and ventilation tubes. In summer, there are outdoor jazz concerts up on the roof. Your next stop should be El Pis de la Pedrera, a faithful reproduction of one of the block's original apartments that's designed to give you an idea of how the middle-classes lived here at the turn of the 20th century. Finally, visit the main floor and its temporary exhibitions.

Museu Egipci de Barcelona-Fundació Arqueològica Clos

Museu Egipci de Barcelona-Fundació Arqueològica Clos a private foundation that seeks to promote archaeology and the study of Ancient Egyptian art. The collection is spread out over three different floors and includes almost four hundred original items (sarcophaguses, funerary steles, busts and more) from different periods of the civilization of Pharaohs. They also organize temporary exhibits about ancient art and several educational courses on Egyptology and other cultures, aimed at both university students and young people or children. Their library also specializes in Egyptology and you can visit it during the museum's opening hours.

Museu del Temple Expiatori de La Sagrada Familia

Templo Expiatorio of the Sagrada Família is the unfinished and most expensive project by Antoni Gaudí, the great architect. This unique exhibit includes plans, drawings, photographs and models related to the construction of the temple, and pieces made from wrought iron, bronze and wood as well. Visitors can also see how the temple was devised and its origins. The museum is located in the crypt of the basilica and you enter from the side of the Passió façade (Carrer Sardenya). There is also a lift that takes visitors to one of the towers, from which there is an excellent view over this unfinished though magnificent construction.

Museu del Clavegueram

Maps, plans and photographs are used to explain the history of Barcelona's sewerage system, and city sewerage systems in general, from the Roman Empire to the present day in this unusual museum. It's part of a private foundation belonging to Catalunya's Institute of Engineers. You enter the building through a glass booth similar to a car park entrance, and once inside you'll see the cisterns and underground passages on which the health and well-being of the population largely depend. It's a unique experience and comes with a couple of drawbacks: the smell and the damp.

Galería Alejandro Sales

Galería Alejandro Sales has garnered a reputation for the versatility it uses to bring to the art world works of artists whose creations are of a variety of styles and who carry out their work in innovative ways like the computer-generated images. The pieces of art exhibited here are made by artists from all over the world. For example, there are the wood carvings by Annis Kapoor and Richard Long.A must-visit for art enthusiasts and connoisseurs.

Museu del Perfum

Museu del Perfum is located in one of the downtown shops of the Regia Perfumeries chain, in a building in Passeig de Gràcia. The collection includes almost 5,000 perfumes and aromas from different cultures and civilizations, dating from Ancient Egypt up to the present day. It was created with objects related to the perfume industry that the owners of this shop collected over the years. Their collection of china perfume bottles from the 18th and 19th centuries is noteworthy. Among other interesting items, they display limited editions, such as a bottle designed by Dalí. In short, visiting this museum is like going on a trip to a world of aromatic sensations without the travel expense!

Galería Senda

This gallery is located in a neighbourhood that is home to the largest number of galleries in Barcelona. Its halls are situated in two different buildings in Calle Consell de Cent, close to each other. The displays here include works of upcoming and renowned painters and local and foreign artistes. Some of the painters who regularly exhibit at the two halls at Galeria Senda are A. Malagrida, R. Herreros and D. Urzay and L. Vidal.