Summary: Barcelona, February 2015

The Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (National museum of Art of Catalonia) is one of my favourite buildings that for me draws forth images of the zenith.of the Spanish Colonial Empire. Such a legacy was bolstered by imported trees and parakeets flying in flocks particularly here.

    I have returned from the five-day trip to Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. A beautiful city nestled along the coast of the Mediterranean and at the foot of the Spanish Alps. I fell in love with the city within the afternoon I had arrived due to the staggering abundance of large Italian-influenced neoclassical facades combined (for at least half od the city) with a well-planned Roman-like grid system. Tree-lined avenues (sadly leaves had not blossomed while I was there but I can almsot imagine what they look like in full bloom) crossed the city and were occasionally peppered with statues and gorgeous fountains. It is a shame that in my haste to leave for it I had left my camera behind because I do nto believe these sketches or my descriptions do the city full justice

     My days were very busy so I did not have much time for sketching. So I used much of friday to wander the city committing it to it to pencil in a new sketchbook. I got the chance to draw La Sagrada Familia and the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya. The top two images ot the left were from two things I had seen outside the Salvidor Dali Theatre and Museum in Figueres, a town an hour or so outside of Barcelona. Even with most of the city being these stone-faced mid-rise buildings the metropolis still felt huge with blocks rising between seven and ten stories in the metropolitan area and between four and six in the older, more tightly-packed and warren-like Gothic District, with four-to-five metre-tall ground floor levels on many of the metropolitan buildings.

Theere were many large ornmaneted buildings like
above.

    This is a city I would definitely love to return to. Despite it's age i'd say it combines it's ancient history and historic architecture with the modernity of an organised modern metropolis (such as New York) very well as much of the city is quite spacious thanks it it's wide avenues. I was able to visit many places by keepign a relatively straight path and it was only in the more maze-like Gothic district where I felt the risk of getting lost.

    As I said above, it is  shame I did not bring a camera because I felt there was a wealth of inspiration here from the broad avenues to the canyon-like Gothic district and Barcelona's central cathedrals. It is a city that despite the 2008 recession is still one of the great cultural and commercial hearts of Europe. The elegant buildings make the entire city ooze wealth and influence even in this modern age of economy and minimalism.