B-Days: Discover Barcelona at incredible rates

Planning a visit to Barcelona? Check out our calendar and take advantatge of B-Days: the new incredible promotion at B-Hotel. For only 65€ per night, stay in one of our B-Rooms.

 Seamlessly blending avant-garde style with ultimate functionality, B-Rooms are equipped with the latest technologies and electronic devices; they also feature high design furnishings, minimalist decor, total luxury and excellent services, such as free Wi-Fi, natural lighting, and king size beds or two singles. Cots are also available.

B-Hotel in Plaza Espanya is a perfect place to stay when visiting Barcelona; it’s just ten minutes from La Rambla and Plaza Catalunya, as well as all the museums on Montjuïc. Its ideal location, in one of Barcelona’s most exciting areas, and just steps away from Fira de Barcelona fairgrounds, has made B-Hotel a key landmark during business meetings and trade conventions.

Click here and check out our B-Days calendar

All Barcelona Museums with one single ticket

Imagine a city where you can see one of the most impressive Romanesque art collections and historical paintings that describe the Mediterranean countries during Middle Ages,  and then, just walking ten minutes you are on a modern building featuring an exceptionally comprehensive collection of works by Joan Miró. But don’t stop there. Continue dreaming about a gothic palace where nobles and knights have been replaced by Pablo Picasso works, a city where buildings seem a quarry or even a dragon…

 Now open your eyes. Welcome to Barcelona !!!

U232 Hotel invites you to discover it on an Art Weekend package, which includes:

• 2 nights stay at our U232 Hotel in Barcelona (on a single, double, triple or family room)
• Breakfast in the exclusive U232 buffet restaurant
• Welcome drink in the U232 bar (1 per person)
• 1 Art Ticket per person that entitle you to visit:
  • Museu Picasso: Picasso lived key years in Barcelona – those of his apprenticeship as an artist. He established and maintained strong links to the city throughout his life and it was here where he wanted his museum to be.
  • Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya: MNAC has the best known display of Romanesque frescoes in the whole of Europe, unique both for the quantity and for the quality of the works on show.
  • Fundació Joan Miró: The Foundation holds an exceptionally comprehensive collection of works by Joan Miró.
  • Centre Cultural Caixa Catalunya  - La Pedrera by Antoni Gaudí: Visit the most famous building bythe most famous architect in Barcelona.
  • Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona: One of the largests collections of Contemporary Art in Europe, in a building by Richard Meier.
  • Fundació Antoni Tàpies
  • Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona

Book now your Art Weekend in Barcelona and discover all the museums of the city !!!

Fashion as seen by Outumuro

Hotel Granvia is one of the favourite sets of the photographer

Under the heading “Outumuro. Looks” Disseny Hub Barcelona has put on display more than 200 images by fashion photographer, Manuel Outumuro. The retrospective exhibition, which can be seen until 25 April, covers twenty years of the photographer’s career

 All the top Spanish models have posed before Outumuro’s lense, such as Laura Ponte, Judit Mascó and Martina Klein, whose first photo was taken by him. “We are practically family” he said.

International models have also posed for Outumuro, including many famous figures, such as Penélope Cruz, Rossy de Palma, Alaska, Diane Kruger and Luz Casal, among many others.

Manuel Outumuro fuses the spirit of classicism with a search for elegance, an elegance which portrays femininity in its truest form. The photographer is drawn towards women’s fashion and the only job he ever rejected was taking photos of jeans. His images are timeless, though the photographer tells us that he works without looking for a particular style. “I take photos as I feel them” he says.

Outumuro’s influences are vast, from Harper’s Bazaar magazines of the forties and fifties to the world of cinema and literature.

Hotel Granvia commemorates this year its 75th anniversary. Stablished on 1935 in the former Palace of Serra-Chopitea family (built in 1870), this hotel has been part of Barcelona’s history and has seen all the majors events of the last century in the city. Its unbeatable location next to Passeig de Gràcia and Plaza Catalunya ensures the best of Barcelona to all its guests.

What: Outumuro. Looks
Photographic exhibition
Where: Disseny Hub Barcelona
Montcada, 12 - Ciutat Vella
When: until April 25th, 2010

New visions at the Virreina Image Centre

As the turkish writer Orhan Pamuk said at the CCCB, museums need to evolve, to free themselves of institutional rules and open themselves up more.

This is the premise for the Virreina Centre de la Imatge’s new stage. Under Carles Guerra’s direction, it opting for a rethinking of its layout and contents, to make culture available to the public according to their needs and to create a dialogue instead of one-way messages.

With these new working guidelines oriented towards cultural-policy debates, the Virreina Centre de la Imatge has two exhibitions in line for 2010 that will examine the weight of urban and media images.

The new Image Centre will not be conceived solely as an art centre; it will attempt to turn itself into a place where images and culture reveal the conditions under which they are produced and circulated.

With this in mind, the exhibition rooms will be concentrated on the second floor of the Palau de la Virreina, with a new layout that removes the architectural barriers and will turn the Xavier Miserachs gallery into a new hub of cultural services in the style of a “laboratory” at street level, allowing the public free admission to the auditorium and archives.

The Image Centre will start these activities on 9 March with Guia secreta de la Rambla (Secret Guide to the Rambla), a look at this controversial urban space now saturated with audiovisual and literary images. Accompanying this will be the book Barcelona en blanc i negre (Barcelona in Black and White), which shows the Rambla as an organic entity fully integrated into the city, and a room devoted to Ocaña for the artist’s central role on this avenue.

Virreina Image Centre website  |  NN Hotels: www.nnhotels.com

MNAC celebrates 75 years

MNAC is 75 years old and is celebrating this by inviting everyone over to its open evening. It will take place thoday Friday 18/12 and visitors will be able to enter its permanent and temporary exhibitions for free. What’s more, there will be talks on some of the museum’s works and live music.

From 7 pm to 12 am, visitors will be able to see for free both its permanent exhibitions and the temporary exhibitions, Guests of Honour and The Wise Princess. The Santa Caterina de Seu d’Urgell Paintings, organised by MNAC and the Museu Episcopal de Vic.

In addition, the museum will also be offering live music by the Rino Dixie Band, from the Taller de Músics, in the Sala Oval. And there will be talks on the most important items in the permanent collection.

Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya - www.mnac.es
C/Mirador Palau Nacional, 6 - Sants-Montjuïc

BAC! 09 - The Barcelona Contemporary Art Festival

The Barcelona Contemporary Art Festival BAC! 09 opens Pandora’s box. At least, this year’s date with international creation is subtitled “Pandora’s Boxes“. An ironic title, as we won’t find all humanity’s ills there, rather an assertion of feminine art, but without any of the clichés normally associated with it.

Neither social criticism nor discourses on gender discrimination; the sixty-or-so female artists whose works are on display in BAC!’s main exhibition at the CCCB, free of charge, prefer humour, irony and a fresher perspective.

This is what we find in Ariadna Arnés’s photos, in Hanamaro Chaki’s illustrations and Bárbara Sánchez Barroso’s embroidery. You can be sure to find installations and videoart there too, such as those by Marta Jiménez Salcedo and Ms Woolman.

One of the highlights of this tenth BAC! is the section entitled “BAC! CAM“. This will feature one of the fullest retrospectives on women’s videoart.

To be more specific, the programme called “Indomitable Women” reviews female videoart over the last forty years, from the field’s pioneers like Maya Deren, celebrity names like Yoko Ono and Joan Jonas, up to more recent creators like Dora García, among others.

X Festival Internacional Barcelona Art Contemporani - BAC Pandora’s Boxes  - website Festival
From01/12/2009 to 03/01/2010
Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB): C/Montalegre, 5

NN Hotels: www.nnhotels.com

Frozen Rates at Hotel Soho Barcelona

Hotel Soho Barcelona announces that the weather forecast for December and January is -20º.

Save 20% on all reservations staying a minimum of 4 nights.

Rates will be dropping down to discount levels never seen before in the city, so take advantage of this offer for your Christmas shopping or to enjoy our incredible January sales.

Book now your stay at Hotel Soho Barcelona. But don’t worry, despite our frozen rates, Barcelona’s mild winter temperatures will be waiting for you!

Hotel Soho Barcelona exclusive design leaves a distinctive mark on Barcelona’s hotel landscape with its cosmopolitan, minimalist, and imminently urbane character. The Gothic neighborhood and the Cathedral are just some of Barcelona’s most emblematic places well within walking distance from the hotel. Guests can also easily walk to the Picasso Museum, the MACBA, and the CCCB, as well as other tourist hot-spots, including the La Boqueria Market, the Liceu Theatre, the Palau de la Música, Plaza Catalunya and Paseo de Gracia.

Check availability and rates !!

Secret Images. Picasso and Japanese Erotic Prints

The exhibition “Secret Images. Picasso and Japanese Erotic Prints” which is open until 14 February 2010, the fruit of some unique research by the Museu Picasso, puts nineteen Japanese prints that belonged to the artist on display for the first time. The exhibition, with over a hundred works, establishes a dialogue between these prints and Picasso’s own erotic engravings.

Although at some point in his life Picasso maintained he had no interest in Japanese art, it is known the painter often changed his ideas.

The exhibition introduces us to the phenomenon of Japonism, which arrived in Barcelona at the end of the 19th century. Picasso’s masters, like Rusiñol, Cases and Nonell discovered Japanese art first hand and were seduced by its flat images.

In Paris too, many of Picasso’s contemporaries were influenced by these images and Japanese aesthetics. In fact, the artist did a sketch for a poster advertising a play with the actress Sadayakko, which revolutionised the artistic atmosphere of the time.

It is known that Picasso owned a Japanese print in 1911 and never got rid of his collection, which contains sixty examples from when Japanese printing was at its height, at around 1700-1800, and its key exponents.

As with these prints, Picasso did not hesitate in showing naked bodies in all their splendour, sketching the genitals of the lovers and showing explicit sex scenes. He even contorted the bodies if necessary.

Secret Images. Picasso and Japanese Erotic Prints | From 05/11/2009 to 14/02/2010
Museu Picasso -> C Montcada, 15 - Ciutat Vella

Exhibition Images & Memories of Mauthausen

Barcelona’s Museu d’Història hosts the touring exhibition, ‘Imatges i memòria de Mauthausen’ (Images and memories of Mauthausen), launched by Mauthasen-related French and Spanish groups and the Austrian Home Office Minister, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Nazi concentration camps.

The exhibition includes over 700 photographs, taken mostly by members of the SS, which have been recovered thanks to the efforts and courage of a group of deported Spanish republicans who want to pay homage to Nazi victims.

Location:  Capella Santa Àgueda  Address: Pl Rei, 9 - Ciutat Vella
End date: 20/11/2009 | Free Entrance

Source: www.bcn.es | NN Hotels: www.nnhotels.com

Exhibition: Pau Casals and the Exile in Barcelona

The Palau Moja has an exhibition on the man who was one of the best known cellists of all time and composed the ‘Hymn of Peace’, Pau Casals, which is based on unpublished photographs and documents from his archives and those of the Generalitats’ president in exile, Josep Tarradellas, and the Biblioteca de Catalunya.

The exhibition, “Pau Casals and Exile” aims to portray the composer as an active political exile, and to show his commitment to freedom and democracy, which led to him being decorated with the UN’s Peace Medal and nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

The exhibition was inaugurated at the Pau Casals Museum of Sant Salvador (El Vendrell) in October 2007 and since then it has visited diverse places: the National Archive of Catalonia in Sant Cugat del Vallès, the Médiathèque of Prades and the Tinglado 1 building of the Port of Tarragona’s Moll de Costa cultural space. An abridged version of the show has been travelling around Spain in 2009 (to the Blanquerna Cultural Centre of Madrid and to Granada) and to Puerto Rico, when it was held at the University of Puerto Rico’s campuses at Río Piedras and Mayagüez.

Palau Moja | 29 November 2009 - Free admission www.paucasals.org
C Portaferrissa, 1

Opening hours:
Tuesdays to Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. | Sundays and holidays, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. | Closed Mondays

NN Hotels: www.nnhotels.com

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