Day 3, we saw the beautiful concert hall – Palau de la Música Catalana. As you can probably guess, it means the palace of Catalan music. What a stunning interior! It would be awesome to see a show during the day when you could enjoy looking at all the stained glass and mosaic art.

Designed in the Catalan modernista style and built between 1905 – 1908, the Palau is an UNESCO World Heritage site. Interestingly, the Palau was built for a choral society at that time.

This unassuming exterior houses a secret – its beautiful interior. Not that the exterior is ugly! 🙂 It does have pretty tile work and some sculpting.

But… wow! Once you step inside you are swept away by the exquisite detail everywhere you look. Here is a view from the upper mezzanine level.

All of the windows along the sides have stained glass, and at the top you can see a “bump” coming down from a very detailed stained glass arrangement.

Here is a view of that if you crane your neck looking up from underneath. That is a VERY detailed piece of stained glass! And, notice how the ceiling around it is decorated with flowers and tile mosaics.

Here is a view across from one side to the other. Those windows are stained glass – but not as intricate as the ceiling.

It’s hard to see in the above image, but each section between the windows has a column ending in a fan-shaped tile mosaic on the ceiling. Here is a closeup of one of them. The tiles were sparkly in the light as you can see by the reflections in this picture.

This is a closer view of the stage with its organ. The sculptured designs on either side up to the ceiling were also very cool.

Here is a closeup of the right side, which depicts the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ from Wagner’s opera. You can see the horses and people intermingling.

Upstairs there was a small balcony for fresh air. Even here they added art with these tiled columns.

The entire Palau was beautiful and we are very glad we visited.

Next up, we walked around a bit and ended up at Guell Palace – very different!