Explore Barcelona

The Museum of the History of Barcelona, MUHBA, traces the city from Roman Barcino to the present. Its main site on Plaça del Rei, opened in 1943, leads underground through excavated streets and workshops of the Roman town and up into the medieval royal palace with the Saló del Tinell and the Chapel of Santa Àgata.

The Erotic Museum Barcelona occupies an upper floor of a building on La Rambla, opposite the Boqueria market, and opened in 1997 as the first museum in Spain devoted to erotic art. Its collection of around 800 pieces includes sculptures, paintings and prints from several cultures, photographs, and films commissioned by King Alfonso XIII.

The European Museum of Modern Art (MEAM) is a private museum of contemporary figurative art in the Palau Gomis, a palace near the Museu Picasso in the La Ribera district that was rebuilt in 1792 for the textile merchant Gomis. Opened in 2011 by the Fundación de las Artes y los Artistas, it shows 20th-century sculpture and 21st-century figurative painting and sculpture.

The Museu Picasso holds more than 4,000 works by Pablo Picasso in five adjoining medieval palaces on Carrer de Montcada in the La Ribera district. Opened in 1963 as the first museum devoted to his work, it focuses on his formative years and his ties to Barcelona, with early paintings such as The First Communion (1896) and Science and Charity (1897).

The Barcelona Wax Museum occupies an 1873 former bank building on Passatge de la Banca, at the lower end of La Rambla, and opened as a wax museum in 1973. Reopened after a full renovation in December 2020, it shows more than 150 figures of real and fictional people across 28 sets.

The Museu de la Xocolata is a museum of chocolate run by the Barcelona pastry makers' guild, opened in 2000 on the ground floor of the former Sant Agustí convent and barracks in El Born. It traces the history of cocoa and chocolate and shows chocolate sculptures of Barcelona buildings and characters from stories, and runs workshops for visitors.

The Museum of the History of Catalonia opened in 1996 in the Palau de Mar, a 19th-century brick warehouse on the Port Vell and the last building left from Barcelona's old industrial port. Its permanent exhibition on the second and third floors traces Catalan history from prehistory to the present, with temporary exhibitions on the first floor.

The Maritime Museum of Barcelona occupies the Drassanes Reials, the Gothic royal shipyards built between the late 13th and late 14th centuries to build galleys for the kings of Aragon. Under the long stone arches it shows ship models, navigation instruments, maps and boats, and it keeps the schooner Santa Eulàlia afloat in the port.

The Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA) stands on Plaça dels Àngels in El Raval, in a white building with a long glass front designed by the American architect Richard Meier and opened in 1995. Its galleries show the museum's collection of art from the mid-20th century onwards alongside changing temporary exhibitions.

Museu Tàpies is an art museum founded in 1984 by the painter Antoni Tàpies and opened in 1990 in the former Montaner i Simon publishing house, an early modernista building of brick and iron by Lluís Domènech i Montaner. A large wire sculpture by Tàpies crowns the roof, and the galleries show his work alongside temporary exhibitions.

The Fundació Joan Miró is a museum of modern art on Montjuïc, created by Joan Miró and opened in 1975 in a white building with courtyards and roof terraces designed by his friend Josep Lluís Sert. It holds a large collection of Miró's paintings, sculptures, tapestries and drawings, and its Espai 13 shows work by young artists.

The Joan Antoni Samaranch Olympic and Sport Museum opened in 2007 on Montjuïc, opposite the Lluís Companys Olympic Stadium, and took its present name in 2010. Run by the Barcelona Olympic Foundation, it covers the Olympic Games and the 1992 Barcelona Games, sport in different civilisations and disability sport, with interactive multimedia displays.

The Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya occupies the Palau Nacional on Montjuïc, a domed palace built for the 1929 International Exhibition. Its collection runs from Romanesque wall paintings taken from Pyrenean churches through Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque art to Catalan modernisme and noucentisme of the early 20th century.

Poble Espanyol is an open-air architectural museum on Montjuïc, built for the 1929 Barcelona International Exposition. Its 117 full-scale buildings reproduce streets, squares and houses from regions across Spain, and now hold artisan workshops, restaurants and the Fran Daurel museum of contemporary art.

Gaudí Experiència is an exhibition centre about the architect Antoni Gaudí on Carrer de Larrard, about 100 metres from Park Güell, opened in 2012. A ten-minute 4D film is the centrepiece, alongside large touchscreen walls on his life and work and models of Park Güell and the unbuilt Hotel Attraction in New York.