Barcelona cultural attractions
Barcelona’s reputation as a world centre for art, architecture and design is growing yearly, with a plethora of cultural activities on offer. There is so much to see and do in Barcelona that it will take weeks just to explore and see everything this beautiful city has to offer. As if it needed confirming, in 1999, the entire city was awarded a Royal Gold Medal for Architecture, from the Royal Institute of British Architects. The seminal ghosts of such artistic luminaries as Antonio Gaudí, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró and Antoni Tàpies permeate Barcelona’s cultural scene.
One of the most notable features of Barcelona is the city's great architectural richness, a characteristic that is the result of the succession of the peoples who have inhabited the city during many hundreds of years, and is manifested in an urban structure that has been configured in four major phases:
- The early nucleus
- Mediaeval and modern Barcelona
- The construction of the Eixample and Modernisme
- The present
The government continually organizes and sponsors exhibitions, concerts and other events, many of them for free. Barcelona offers a wide variety of art, theaters and concerts. Barcelona has 3 most prominent cultural centers:
- CCCB (Barcelona Center of Contemporary Culture), which organizes an incredibly diverse calendar of exhibitions, film series, music & dance, courses & lectures and workshops.
- La Pedrera, it's one of the city's modern architectural masterpieces.
- Caixa Forum, it has already established a well respected program of exhibits, music, literature/ lectures, family activities, social action projects, and programs for senior citizens.
Sporting activities are big in Barcelona. It was the home of the summer Olympic games in 1992 and home to several soccer clubs. Barcelona has boomed since the early 1990s, when preparations for the Olympic Games wrenched it into modernity, and today it remains well in the vanguard of other Spanish cities (with the possible exception of Madrid) in terms of prosperity, stability and cultural activity. Amount of tourists is growing and it means Barcelona accommodation develops and improves. For tourists planning to come to Barcelona when arranging some Barcelona hotels, there are 3 key stages that you need to go through to ensure you make the right decisions.
- Finding the right location for Barcelona hotels.
- Choosing the right type of accommodation for you needs.
- Finding the most competitive price.
If you find right hotels in Barcelona, your trip will be guaranteed and you can explore rich Barcelona culture.
Barcelona has a long-standing tradition of theatre, but it has also opened its arms to the latest avant-garde currents and the most radical and daring new work. The range of Barcelona's stage facilities can be differentiated in three main blocs:
- public theatre (examples here are the Teatre Grec, which gave its name to the city's annual Grec Summer Festival, the Mercat de les Flors and the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya)
- private theatres (with a highly diversified commercial circuit)
- series of alternative theatre venues.
Barcelona is very famous for dancing and singing. The city's main venue for ballet and contemporary dance is the L'Espai de Dansa I Música de la Generalitat de Catalunya - referred to simply as L'Espai, Travesera de Gràcia 63 (tel: (93) 414 3133). A more relaxed atmosphere is in evidence on Sunday mornings, in the square in front of Catedral de la Seu, when locals flock to watch and participate in the local dance - the sardana. Music-hall-style Cabaret shows are very popular in Barcelona.
Regarding singing home grown stars include the cellist Pablo Casals and the international opera singers Josep Carreras and Montserrat Caballé.
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