Visit the Dalí Museum in Barcelona

Salvador Dalí, born in Figueres in 1904 and died in 1989, was a Spanish painter who left his mark on the history of surrealism. He was inspired and fascinated by the Italian and Spanish Old Masters, and discovered painting as a child thanks to a local painter, Ramon Pichot. Dalí married his muse Gala in 1934, who was his inspiration and who represented more than half of his work. It was Dalí himself, during his lifetime in 1974, who decided to open the museum in his honour. He died in 1989 of a heart attack and was buried in his own museum. One of Dalí's symbols was his famous moustache, which was curved upwards. According to Dalí, his moustache provided him with cosmic inspiration.

In Figueres, the gateway to Spanish Catalonia from French Catalonia, a steady stream of tourist buses heads towards the Dalí Museum. To find it, all you have to do is follow the crowd and look up to see the golden statuettes on the roof of the museum. Although the entrance façade is almost understated in relation to the figure, no sooner do you pass through the ticket control than you find yourself immersed in what was both the first scene and the final act of Salvador Dalí's work.

The choice of this former theatre is the result of a carefully considered symbolism: it was here that the artist began his painting lessons at the age of 13, and thus his first works. And it was here that he decided to produce his last works. Dalí wanted to create a museum of memory, because he was obsessed by the persistence of memory and its capacity to make us immortal. The building as a whole is the largest surrealist object in the world. Its impressive entrance courtyard alone would be enough to fill several art history books, given its symbolic complexity.

As well as its beaches, the Costa Brava is for many synonymous with the Dalinian triangle, made up of the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres, the Salvador Dalí House-Museum in Portlligat and the Castello Gala Dalí House-Museum in Púbol.

📍 Location: Plaça Gala i Salvador Dalí, 5, 17600 Figueres, Girona, Spain

🚌 Getting there: the museum is located in Figueres, a small town more than an hour and a half from Barcelona by car. You can get there by bus or train. Figueres railway station is an hour and a half's journey from Barcelona to the Dalí Museum.

⏰ Opening times:

• 01/01 - 28/02: 10.30am - 6.00pm
• 01/03 - 31/03: 9.30am - 6pm
• 01/04 - 30/09: 9am - 8pm
• 01/10 - 31/10: 9.30am - 6.00pm
• 01/11 - 31/12: 10.30am - 6pm

Open by night: from 27/07 to 31/08 from 10pm to 1am.

The museum is closed on Mondays except in July, August and September. Exceptional closure on 25 December and 1 January.

👛 Price:

• standard admission: €16
• over 65s/students/unemployed: €9
• admission 0 - 8 years: free

Tip: buy your tickets online and wait in a special, shorter queue.

🕑 Duration on site: 1h30