The Palau de la Música Catalana is the home of a choir. It was built by the Orfeó Català, a choral society founded in 1891, and paid for by public subscription, with money from its members and from Barcelona’s middle classes. The architect was Lluís Domènech i Montaner, who also designed the Sant Pau hospital, and the result is the only concert hall in the world listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Inside, the walls are almost entirely made of coloured glass, and from the ceiling hangs a huge golden skylight that represents the sun. By day the light comes in through it and through the windows, and the hall lights up with colour.
The hours are tight: visits run only from 9:00 to 15:30. Visits and concerts are paid for separately, because a concert ticket does not include the visit, and vice versa.
Why, at the back of the stage, do eighteen young women emerge from the wall, half sculpture and half mosaic?
A palace paid for by a choir
The Orfeó Català was founded in 1891 by Lluís Millet and Amadeu Vives, to make the Catalan and international choral repertoire better known. In 1904 the members’ assembly approved the project and the budget, Domènech received the commission, and the choir bought the land: it was the cloister of the old convent of Sant Francesc de Paula, in the Sant Pere district.
The first stone was laid on 23 April 1905, and the building opened on 9 February 1908. The following year the City Council awarded it the prize for the best building put up in the city. It has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1997, together with Sant Pau.
A façade you can never see whole
Why is it so hard to see the whole façade of the Palau?
Because it stands on the corner of two narrow streets, Carrer de Sant Pere Més Alt and Carrer d’Amadeu Vives, and there is no spot from which you can take it all in. The official website admits as much without beating about the bush.
On the corner projects the sculptural group “La cançó popular catalana” by Miquel Blay, unveiled on 8 September 1909: at the top is Saint George in armour, below him a large female figure leaning forward like a ship’s figurehead, who stands for music, and around her sailors, peasants, an old man and children, the people singing.
On the second floor of the façade are the busts of Palestrina, Bach and Beethoven, carved by Eusebi Arnau; Wagner’s is round the corner, on Carrer d’Amadeu Vives. At the top, a mosaic pediment by Lluís Bru takes up the Orfeó’s banner. Until 1989 you went in from Sant Pere Més Alt; today the entrance is in the part added during the restoration and extension by Óscar Tusquets and Carles Díaz, between 1982 and 1989.
A glass box with the sun at its centre
The concert hall is a cage of metal structure enclosed by walls of glass: the side walls are stained-glass windows, and in the middle of the ceiling is the skylight by Antoni Rigalt, an inverted dome of golden glass surrounded by blue and white glass. It is the sun in the sky, and around the sun, if you look carefully, there is a ring of female figures, a silent choir.
The skylight opens to the outside, so by day the light comes in through it; when it is dark outside, it is lit up like a lamp.
The proscenium arch: folk music on the left, Wagner on the right
What are Wagner’s Valkyries doing on the stage of a Catalan choir?
The arch that frames the stage is a manifesto in stone, carved by Dídac Masana and completed by the young Pablo Gargallo. On the left, under a large tree, is the bust of Josep Anselm Clavé, who revived popular choral singing in Catalonia, and at his feet a group of young women representing his song “Les flors de maig”. On the right, between two Doric columns, is the bust of Beethoven, and above him Wagner’s Valkyries ride out of the clouds on horseback.
The meaning is openly declared: on one side Catalan folk music, on the other the great European music, which in Barcelona at the start of the twentieth century meant above all Wagner. At the top the two sides almost touch.
The eighteen muses
At the back of the stage, in a semicircle, are the eighteen muses. The upper part of the body, from the waist up, is a sculpture by Eusebi Arnau that projects from the wall; the skirt is a mosaic by Lluís Bru and Mario Maragliano that is part of the wall itself. Each one plays a different instrument, and each has a different skirt, blouse and hairstyle.
Above them is the organ, and in the middle, between the two groups of muses, the banner of the Orfeó Català in mosaic.
Visit it, or listen to it
You can see the Palau in two ways, and it is worth knowing what each one gives you. The visit lasts about fifty minutes and takes in the concert hall, the main staircase, the foyer and the Sala Lluís Millet, the double-height room from which you see the mosaic columns of the façade up close. You can do it on your own with a leaflet, with an audio guide or with a guide.
A concert, on the other hand, lets you hear the hall for what it is, but you see it from your seat, and if the concert is in the evening the skylight is lit and the windows are dark. If you can only manage one of the two, for the architecture choose the daytime visit.
Practical information
Details checked on 27 October 2026 on the official website, palaumusica.cat. Prices and opening hours change: check again before you leave.
The Palau, Sant Pau and the Cafè Vienès in Casa Fuster can be seen together with the “Domènech i Montaner” pass, sold on the Sant Pau website. The story of the hospital is in Sant Pau, Domènech’s city; that of Gaudí, who had been Domènech’s student at the school of architecture, begins in a house in Gràcia, Casa Vicens, and ends at the Sagrada Família.
Photographs from Wikimedia Commons: the hall with the organ, the skylight and the proscenium arch, by Alvesgaspar, CC BY-SA 4.0; the façade from the street, by Fred Romero, CC BY 2.0; the group by Miquel Blay, by Selbymay, CC BY-SA 3.0; the muses, by Francesco Bini, CC BY-SA 4.0.
