When you travel to Figueres (fig trees) from Barcelona, you might think you are entering another world. But you would be wrong. Until the train stops at the little station, and you walk through the weave of this small city, the birthplace of Salvador Dalí, through the various permutations of path (head up, left, then up and to the right) and enter the Placa Gala i Salvador Dalí, you haven’t seen anything.
Look up and around. Get your bearings, because things look different here. Get in line for your ticket. And hold tight. After all, this museum is supposedly the largest surrealistic object in the world (never mind the pillow)!
THE JEWELS
It is also said that Figueres is the Catalan birthplace of the Sardana dance (featured in a subsequent slideshow). Whether or not that is the case, you will certainly feel like dancing when you come out of the Dalí Museum. But before you head back down to return to the train station (don’t be embarrassed if you get lost) … don’t forget to see the Dalí Joies exhibit around the corner. That gallery shows the collection of 37 jewels in gold and precious stones and 27 drawings and paintings on paper that Dalí made in designing the jewels between 1941 and 1970. (I like to think that he was inspired by his lovely gal, Gala.)
PICASSO
Full title: “Portrait of Pablo Picasso” (another Catalan) “in the Twenty-first Century (One of a series of portraits of Geniuses – Homer, Dali, Freud, Christopher Columbus, William Tell, etc.” That’s Dali, with tongue firmly in cheek.
Through the looking glass ~ 