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Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Pedralbes' y Plaça d'Espanya, Barcelona!

Monestir de Pedralbes
This part of Barcelona was very cool very old town feel with cobble stone roads and historic Gothic architecture!


Spanish detail!


The Monastery of Pedralbes is a Gothic monastery in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. It is now a museum, housing collections from Barcelona City's History Museum.


Old Door!


Love how the stone walls are so weathered!


The monastery was founded by King James II of Aragon for his wife Elisenda de Montcada in 1326. It housed a community of Poor Clares, mostly members of noble families. The queen gave the monastery a series of privileges, including the direct protection of the city of Barcelona, through the Consell de Cent. 


Originally the monastery, built in white stone, was defended by a line of walls, of which today only two towers and one gate remain.


During the Catalan Revolt (1640), the nuns were expelled, but later returned. A small number of nuns still reside in the complex. The monastery was declared a national monument in 1991.



The church has a single nave, with rib vaults and a polygonal apse, and houses a Gothic retablo by Jaume Huguet. The façade is characterized by a large rose window.


The pews!


The organ!


The cloister has three floors, and a length of 40 meters, with a central garden of orange trees and palms. It is formed by wide arches on columns, whose capitals are decorated with the emblems of the Kings of Aragon and the House of Montcada.


We all raced up the stairs! to nothing on the other side lol



Palau Reial de Pedralbes
This garden was very beautiful and calm! 
Palau Reial de Pedralbes is a building placed in the middle of an ample garden in the district of Les Corts, in Barcelona. From 1919 until 1931 it was the residence for the Spanish Royal Family when they visited the city. It houses the Museu de la Ceramica (ceramic museum),Museu Tèxtil i d'Indumentària and Museu de les Arts Decoratives (interior design museum). 


The Can Feliu building was remodeled by the architect Joan Martorell i Montells, who built a Caribbean-style small palace, together with a Gothic-style chapel and surrounded by magnificent gardens. Later the building remodeling was given to Antoni Gaudí, together with the construction of a surrounding perimeter wall and the side entry pavilions. Gaudí also partially designed the gardens surrounding the palace, placing two fountains and a pergola and planted many Mediterranean plants like palm trees, cypress trees, magnolias, pine trees and eucalyptus.


Eusebi Güell gave the house and garden to the Royal family, as a thank you for his noble title of Count given to him, in 1918. The house was then remodeled to become a royal palace. The work was done from 1919 to 1924 by the architects Eusebi Bona and Francesc Nebot.


In 1924 it was officially made a royal palace but, with the second Spanish Republic's proclamation in 1931, it became property of the city government, which decided to make it a decorative arts museum, inaugurated in 1932. 


The palace is formed by a central building four stories high, with a chapel on the back side and two three stories high side wings that form a curve with the front facade towards the front. The outside facade is done in the Noucentisme movement style with Tuscan order columns forming two porches, with round arches and medallions and jars on the top. The interior of the building is of many styles both in decoration as in furniture, going from Louis XIV style to contemporary styles.


The gardens were designed by Nicolau Maria Rubió i Tudurí, from a design that included, in a geometrically decorative area, lots of the trees already present, a pond with many decorative elements, Gaudi's fountain, bamboo benches, three lighted fountains by Carles Buïgas, the same designer of the Magic Fountain in Montjuïc and many statues such is the one of Queen Isabella II with her son Alfonso XII on the front of the palace, a work of Agapit Vallmitjana.

Plaça d'Espanya
Plaça d'Espanya also known as Plaza de España in Spanish, is one of Barcelona's most important squares, built on the occasion of the 1929 International Exhibition, held at the foot of Montjuïc, in the Sants-Montjuïc district.



The Venetian Towers is the popular name for a pair of towers on Avinguda de la Reina Maria Cristina at its junction with Plaça d'Espanya in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. There is one tower on either side of the street.


The towers are 47m high, with a 7.2 metres square cross-section. The bottom section of each is built of artificial stone, the main section of red brick, and the top section is a colonnaded viewing gallery built of artificial stone, and topped by a pyramidal copper roof. 


Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya is the national museum of Catalan visual art located in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. Situated on Montjuïc hill at the end of Avinguda de la Reina Maria Cristina, near Pl Espanya. The museum is especially notable for its outstanding collection of romanesque church paintings, and for Catalan art and design from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including modernisme and noucentisme.


Collections in the museum- Romanesque Art, Gothic Art, Renaissance and Baroque Art, The Cambo Bequest, Thyssen Bornemisza, Modern Art, Carmen Thyssen Bornemisza, Cabinet of Drawings and Paintings, Numismatic Cabinet of Catalonia. 


The Museum is housed in the Palau Nacional, a huge, Italian-style building dating to 1929.


The Venetian Towers serve a purely ornamental function, to mark the entrance to the exhibition district, now known as Fira de Barcelona, and the start of the grand avenue leading up to the Palau Nacional on Montjuïc. Originally, the towers were open to the public, who could climb the internal stairs to the viewing galleries, but they are now closed.


The Palau Nacional is a huge building (over 50,000 m2) which embodies the academic classical style that predominated in constructions for all the universal exhibitions of the period. Its façade is crowned by a great dome inspired by St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican City in Rome, flanked by two smaller domes, while four towers modelled on Santiago de Compostela Cathedral stand at the corners of the so-called Sala Oval, or Oval Hall. 


During 2012, the towers started undergoing extensive restoration work, costing an estimated €700,000. This would enable the removal of the netting which had been put in place around the viewing galleries to catch any debris falling from damaged sections.


Arenas de Barcelona, a bullring - It was built in 1900 in the Moorish Revival style and has been converted into a shopping center.



Spanish Word of the Day:
Jardín meaning Garden

PEACE & LOVE,
Kevin & Amanda


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