Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC)

The Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC) occupies the Palau Nacional on the upper terraces of Montjuïc hill, a Baroque-Neoclassical palace designed by Enric Catà and Pedro Cendoya for the 1929 Barcelona International Exhibition. The building's imposing twin towers and central dome are recognizable from the lower city, and the view from the museum's main terrace — down the Avinguda de la Reina Maria Cristina toward Plaça Espanya, framed by the illuminated Font Màgica fountain and the commercial towers beyond — is one of Barcelona's most celebrated urban panoramas. The museum's holdings span a thousand years of Catalan art from the 10th to the mid-20th century, but its pre-eminent treasure is the Romanesque collection: a comprehensive assembly of 12th and early-13th century fresco paintings removed from remote Pyrenean churches in the 1920s to preserve them from deterioration and theft. These paintings — removed from the apses, vaults, and walls of churches in the Boí valley, the Pallars, and the Alt Urgell — are displayed in specially constructed curved forms that recreate the original church apses, allowing visitors to experience the paintings in near-original spatial context. The Pantocràtor apse from Sant Climent de Taüll, with its fierce, all-seeing Christ in Majesty, is the collection's icon. The Gothic galleries contain masterworks of 14th-15th century Catalan panel painting and altarpiece sculpture. Further galleries cover Renaissance and Baroque works, the Cambó donation of European old masters, Modernista interiors with original Domènech i Montaner furniture, and early 20th-century Catalan painting including works by Mir, Nonell, and Sunyer.