Design Museum of Barcelona is a Delightful Mix of Classical and Modern

Whenever Therese and I travel to a big city where we stay awhile, we usually will visit their museum of decorative arts. We love looking at ceramics, glassware, furniture, all the expressions of artistic finery applied to textiles and other sorts of practical functions. In Barcelona, that museum is called the Design Museum, and in the middle of our week in the city, we paid them a visit.

We were delighted to see that they have many examples of classic Medieval- and Renaissance-era ceramics, and related materials that were a little more recent.

We also found the thing that inspired us to visit this museum in the first place. Let me backtrack just for a moment: on our first day in Barcelona, when we had visited the Mercat del Born, one of the city’s oldest markets which has now been converted to an archeological display, there was a photo of a particularly evocative large tilework showing people of Barcelona from I believe the 18th century. The caption said the original was at the Design Museum. We said, oh let’s go see that and visit the Design Museum! Anyway, here was this very large tilework, and a companion piece as well.

As usually happens with these sorts of museums, this one also had a substantial area devoted to modern design – furniture and other practical items, like teapots, immersion blenders, and even a commode (or toilet)/sink combination.

There was even a small representation of Cobi, the Olympics mascot from the 1992 Barcelona games. Those Olympics are still at this point the only time that Spain has hosted them, a source of great pride undoubtedly to all Catalans – Madrid did bid for the 2020 games, but came in third behind Tokyo (the winner) and Istanbul.

The location of the Design Museum felt rather remote to us. It is right near a Metro stop, but when you come up onto the street, it is not immediately obvious as to where the museum is. But if you are like us, after looking in all directions, you will say, hmmm, that building over there looks like a good candidate, and when you cross the street, you will then see the sign for it. Anyway, we discovered that there was a great view of the Sagrada Familia from the museum, and added unexpected bonus. We felt that our visit was more than worthwhile, and are glad we ventured out there to the Design Museum.

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