The palace
The history of Palau Dalmases
How a house on Carrer de Montcada became a baroque palace, an academy, a cultural society's headquarters and today a place for flamenco.
Reserve your Palau Dalmases seats ↗Three plots become one house
Palau Dalmases grew out of three separate plots on Carrer de Montcada and Carrer dels Banys Vells, assembled in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Bernat de Boixadors, the first Count of Savallà, bought a house on Banys Vells in 1585 and inherited another on Montcada the following year. In 1612 he added the neighbouring plot. Later owners joined the properties into one large house, which stayed in the hands of noble families for decades before the bombardment that changed it.
Ruin and rebuilding
The bombardment of Barcelona in 1697 left the main house on Carrer de Montcada in ruins. On 6 January 1698 the merchant Pau de Dalmases i Castells, known as Ros, bought it from the heir's representative, a cathedral canon, and had it rebuilt almost from scratch. The quality of the finishes and the unusual subject matter of the carved decoration suggest that his son Pau Ignasi, a well-read man, influenced the design. That decoration is the reason the house is still counted among the finest baroque townhouses in Barcelona.
An academy at home
Pau Ignasi de Dalmases i Ros was knighted by Charles II in 1692 and became an ambassador to England in 1713. Around 1700 he headed fourteen scholars who founded the Academy of the Distrustful, a baroque literary and musical association devoted to classical and Catalan history and poetry. It met until 1703, when the War of the Spanish Succession scattered its members. Its only publication was a volume of mourning verse on the death of Charles II. A later generation of the family helped found the Royal Academy of Good Letters of Barcelona.
Shops, a warehouse and a fire
Like many Montcada mansions, the house did not stay purely residential. In the 18th century shops opened on its ground floor, and in 1872 a wholesale drugstore moved in. A fire in the warehouse on 10 October 1889 killed two employees and badly damaged the main floor. The next year the architect Josep Pellicer rebuilt much of the upper floor. In 1959 the municipal architect Adolf Florensa rebuilt two ground-floor windows that shopfronts had destroyed, as part of a campaign to restore the street's dignity.
A home for Catalan culture
In 1961 the owner handed the main floor to Òmnium Cultural, the Catalan cultural society, which kept its central headquarters here until 2002. From 1962 to 1982 the building also housed the Institute of Catalan Studies. The main hall, 85 square metres and two storeys high, is painted from floor to ceiling with trompe-l'oeil columns, statues and drapery by the decorator Pau Rigalt, with a ceiling allegory of Apollo's chariot. A small chapel has a plaster vault that may be an early example of Catalan neo-Gothic decoration.
The courtyard, the stair and the garden
The central courtyard is the best-known space. Low arches on Tuscan columns surround it, and the stone staircase rises through two ramping arches on twisted Solomonic columns, behind a balustrade carved with the Abduction of Europa and the Triumph of Neptune. At the back, a raised garden of nearly 300 square metres, in the tradition of Barcelona's elevated baroque gardens, holds a white marble fountain that is unique in Catalan baroque art. The street front is built of Montjuïc stone.
Flamenco in an old stone house
Today the palace is listed by Barcelona's tourism board as the baroque house on Carrer de Montcada, and it hosts a flamenco show with a singer, a guitarist and two dancers. The arrangement fits the building's history: a house built by a merchant, used by a music and literature academy and later by cultural societies, now serves a performing art. Tickets include access to an art gallery on the premises.
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