Barcelona with children: Backpack baby

Travelling with kids to Barcelona allows you to discover a lot of interesting places and activities out of the mainstream. For instance, museums such as Museu Marítim, with its old ships and cool audiovisual displays; or the deliciously sweet and small Museu de la Xocolata or the enjoyably creepy wax figures of the Museu de Cera and the interactive CosmoCaixa, a mecca for knob-twiddling kids of all ages.

Weather in Barcelona is always inviting you to discover the parks of the city. A walk around Montjuïc, including exploration of its atmospheric Castle, should appeal. The sheer weirdness of Gaudí’s Park Güell will have older children intrigued, while younger kids usually like the dragon at Parc d’Espanya Industrial and the laberynth in Horta.

Backpack Baby: Your travels made easy!

Travelling with babies or toddlers? Backpack Baby offers you a complete range of child care facilities: from a stroller, cot, high chair, car seat, buggy, carrier or any product you may need. Rent it for days, weeks or months and deliver it in Barcelona and surroundings. Useful and convenient. They can also purchase basic childcare products to have everything ready upon your arrival.

At Backpack Baby do their best to enable you to travel light. Contact them for your family travels!

L’U232 Hotel promeut le meilleur art de Barcelone

Les passionnés d’art n’ont plus d’excuses pour ne pas s’évader et profiter d’un week-end complet à Barcelone durant lequel ils pourront visiter quelques-uns des musées et des centres culturels les plus réputés au niveau international. L’U232 Hotel, qui appartient au réseau d’établissements que le groupe Núñez i Navarro possède à Barcelone, a créé l’Art Weekend Pack grâce auquel les visiteurs passeront d’inoubliables journées en compagnie des collections permanentes et temporaires que la ville accueille, tout en profitant des installations et services que cet établissement, plein de personnalité, leur propose.

L’Art Weekend Pack inclut l’entrée à sept des installations culturelles les plus reconnues et admirées de Barcelone. Peinture, sculpture, architecture, photographie… de l’art roman aux tendances les plus innovatrices en passant par le modernisme de Gaudí. À ce pack exclusif, spécialement conçu pour les passionnés d’art, s’ajoute un séjour de deux nuits à l’U232 Hotel, un cocktail de bienvenue au U232 Bar et un petit-déjeuner buffet complet.

L’U232 Hotel est l’endroit idéal pour les voyageurs désireux de profiter de leur escapade à Barcelone, grâce à son emplacement situé tout près des principales zones commerciales et des quartiers d’affaires de la ville tels que le Paseo de Gracia ou l’Avenida Diagonal. Cet hôtel offre une atmosphère sobre et chaleureuse, au style british très prononcé, pleine de réminiscences coloniales.

Titanic: the exhibition in Barcelona

About 200 of the items that were on board the Titanic as it sank, recreations of cabins and even explanations about their design and construction are now showing at the Maritime Museum.

Visitors will transport themselves back to the past, and discover at first hand what life was like on board this ship, thanks to the original items such as the complete passenger list and first-class dining crockery.

Just in time to commemorate the centenary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic ship, Titanic The Exhibition arrives at the Maritime Museum of Barcelona. The exhibition takes the visitor back in time and lets you know how fleeting life was on the ship, from its conception and construction to the present state of the remains of nearly 4 kilometers deep North Atlantic. The nearly 200 objects, its faithful recreation of the interior rooms of transatlantic, as the cabins or the corridors of the first class, and how it reflects the true history of the ship, has become one of the exhibitions more viewed the world.

Among the original objects that we see include the list of passengers, approved and certified by the White Star Line on May 31, 1912 (the only preserved today), a piece of coal more than 2 kilos (from the No. 1 boiler room, which was in use until the last moment) or the two original letters written by the Titanic’s first officer, William Murdoch. Pieces of first class dinner, the original list of bodies recovered from the tragedy, books, letters, photos, shoes, boarding cards or chart, never exhibited before.

To perform this task informative, Titanic: The Exhibition has its own specialist, CG Wetterholm, Titanic historian for over 30 years and one of the people who participated in expeditions to rescue the remains of the ship along the nineties.

The exhibition is a production of the Titanic Foundation, which is to disseminate the history of the ship and preserve his memory.

Further information and tickets: Museu Marítim de Barcelona

Myths and Ancient Coins

Gods and heroes adorned the coins of Hispania. Now an exhibition explains some of the beliefs associated with them. They were not just used to pay for products and services but also as amulets, talismans, offerings and funeral and even items. We are referring to the coins of Roman Hispania now on display at the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (MNAC) in an exhibition entitled Gods and Myths of Antiquity. The evidence from Hispanic coins.

In fact there are 289 items, coins and archaeological objects, which clearly show the proliferation of images, of gods and heroes, that appeared on coins produced before the arrival of the Visigoths in the Iberian Peninsula, after which the Christian cross began to replace the images of Heracles and Europa.

Gods and myths of antiquity, an exhibition organized by the Numismatic Cabinet of Catalonia, proposes an approach to the gods, myths and cults of the inhabitants of the Iberian peninsula from the fifth century before Christ, and until the arrival of the Visigoths about one thousand years later.

MNAC is located in Montjuic, just beside the Magical Fountains and very near our B-Hotel in Plaza Espanya, next to Las Arenas Shopping Mall.

The largest retrospective of Delacroix, now in Barcelona

Every facet of Eugène Delacroix can be seen at the exhibition on at the CaixaForum. This is the most important retrospective dedicated to the French painter for half a century, and features over a hundred and thirty works. These will include paintings from the world’s most important museums; works that are milestones in Western visual culture. You will be able to see not just Delacroix’s most famous oil paintings but also a series of works that explore the painter’s relationship with Spain. CaixaForum offers you an Interactive visit.

This exhibition, jointly organized by CaixaForum and the Louvre as part of an agreement of collaboration is the most important in Spain that has been organized around the figure of Delacroix. It has loans of such important institutions as the National Gallery in London, the Metropolitan Museum in New York or the Art Institute of Chicago.

CaixaForum has been designed as a space for dissemination and debate on culture and its many manifestations. It offers a miscellaneous range of subjects that covers all periods, from the initial manifestations of art to the most innovative and recent avant-garde, and feature the greatest ever exponents of art and culture. CaixaForum also periodically runs cycles of conferences, seminars, courses, concerts, performances and special events that help to prompt reflection on this changing world and better understanding both of our society and that of other cultures.

CaixaForum is located in Montjuïc, just a few meters from our B-Hotel in Plaza Espanya and next to Las Arenas shopping mall.

Volum! Exhibition at Macba Museum Barcelona

“Volum!” turns visitors to the Macba into listeners on a physical journey that aims to move from the central role of more classic three dimensionality to that of the volume of sound and voice as key artistic production materials, for exploring the transition from the 20th to the 21st century.

And it does so through 350 works of art by 75 international artists, including Miquel Barceló, Samuel Beckett, Luis Gordillo, Richard Hamilton, Joan Miró, Xavier Miserachs, Muntada, Juan Muñoz, Bruce Nauman, Antoni Tàpies, Jean Dubuffet, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Allan McCollum, Anselm Kiefer, Latifa Echakhch and James Coleman.

This is the first in a series of large-scale exhibitions jointly organised by the Macba and the “la Caixa” Foundation with various selections of the 5.500 works that make up the collections of the two institutions.

The exhibition questions the continued validity of the white cube as an architectural model in which the eye is the only means of accessing art.

Paintings, sculptures, photographs, videos and installations all form part of this exhibition which explores artistic practices from the mid twentieth century to the present day, highlighting the change in the sensory paradigm.

Highlights of the exhibition include: the video Not I, a dramatic monologue that Samuel Beckett brought to television; the video installation by Bruce Nauman Shit in your hat; the room with geometric tiles Waste Land, by Juan Muñoz; the painting Saison des pluies nº2, by Miquel Barceló; the installation Hey Joe, by Kristin Oppenheim, and Cristina Iglesias‘ Corredor Suspendido II.

Joan Miró: The ladder of escape

Renowned as one of the greatest Surrealist painters, filling his paintings with luxuriant colour, Joan Miró worked in a rich variety of styles. This is a rare opportunity to enjoy more than 150 paintings, drawings, sculptures and prints from moments across the six decades of his extraordinary career. This exhibition is co-organised by Tate Modern and Fundació Joan Miró.

The exhibition also traces an anxious and politically engaged side to Miró’s work that reflects his passionate response to one of the most turbulent periods in European history. Working in Barcelona and Paris, Miró tracked the mood of the Spanish Civil War and the first months of the Second World War in France. It also shows that, behind the engaging innocence of his imagery, lies a profound concern for humanity and a sense of personal and Catalan national identity. Extraordinary works from different moments of his career celebrate his roots in his native Catalonia.

Fundació Joan Miró is located at Montjuic, accesible by Funicular from Parallel station, just in front of Hotel Barcelona Universal. You can reach Fundació Joan Miró also from Plaza Espanya, by bus line 50, stopping next to B-Hotel.

More information can be found at Fundació Joan Miró website.

Hyperphotos: A fantastical Barcelona

Sagrada Família, Palau de la Música, Pedrera and the Cathedral are the most photographed monuments in the city, but through the lens of the French artist Jean-François Rauzier they are transformed into magical and mysterious places.

Rauzier uses a technique based on creating a collage from various instant snapshots to create these hyperphotos, thirty of which are included in the exhibition Voyages Extraordinaires Barcelona, at the Diocesan Museum of Barcelona. There you will discover a fantastical and surprising city.

Rauzier is the creator of  hyperphoto, whereby you can cope with the impossible: combine the infinitely large with the infinitely small in an image outside of time. Using a technique that involves creating an image using a collage of more than 800 photos.

A Whale Skeleton installed at Museu Blau

From last Tuesday 12 July, visitors to the Museu Blau will be received by a very special host: the whale skeleton from the Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona’s collection.

This skeleton of a Common Finback whale has now been installed in the museum’s entrance hall, and is displayed in a more natural position than at the Castell dels Tres Dragons. The size of the hall allows it to be exhibited in the position it adopts when diving into the sea.

The museum was closed to the public from 1 to 11 July so that the 20-metre long skeleton, which weighs one tonne. A team of architects were required for this to be possible, along with a series of companies specialising in large-scale assembly and cetacean skeleton assembly experts.

The skeleton has been under restoration over the past few months and the front part of the cranium has been repaired, after it was damaged when being taken down a year ago. All the bones have been weighed and measured, replicas of the invertebral discs, previously missing, were made, and the anchorage and support points designed.

As head of collections at the Natural Science Museum, Eulàlia Garcia, explained, the whale has a steel tube running through the spinal column, to which the anchorage points are attached, thus ensuring that the bones themselves would not be damaged for the installation. Some 44 cables hold the skeleton in place.

Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona – Museu Blau
Pl Leonardo Da Vinci, 4 | Sant Martí

Frederic Marès Museum reopens

The Museu Frederic Marès is a unique collecting museum that preserves the collections assembled by its founder, sculptor Frederic Marès (1893-1991) in a part of the old Royal Palace of the Counts of Barcelona in the heart of the Gothic Quarter. Its original Verger or courtyard garden, still remains intact.

Throughout his lifetime he amassed an extensive Hispanic sculpture collection, as well as tens of thousands of objects that make up a vast collection of collections that documents past lifestyles and customs, mainly from the 19th century. There you can find amusing, unique items like fans, pipes, clocks, jewellery, photographs, toys, keys, pharmacy bottles and reliquaries, all presented in an intimate atmosphere.

The Verger of the Royal Palace is a courtyard filled with orange trees surrounded by arched galleries, a pleasant spot in fine weather; and its open from April to September, both for museum visitors and promenaders.

Frederic Marès i Deulovol (Portbou, 1893 – Barcelona, 1991) came to Barcelona with his family in 1903, when he was ten years old. He immediately started attending classes at the School of Fine Arts, La Llotja, where he received training as a sculptor, and where he would later work as a teacher until 1964.

However, in addition to being a sculptor, Marès also felt a passion for collecting from a tender age. He discovered the world of antiquarians and auctions in Paris back in 1911 and purchased his first collections. He gradually expanded them and gathered them in his sculpture workshop and at his home until in 1944 the Association of Friends of Catalan Museums held an exhibition with a selection from his collection at the City History Archive, and he publicly expressed his determination to donate his collection to the city.

More inf@: Museu Frederic Marès.

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