A day of museums in pictures

For my 50th birthday, I went around to four different museums in Barcelona. Not sure how I'm ever going to top this, if I'm honest. Each museum gave insight into the city, as well as some unique perspectives on history in general. If you know me at all, you know that's pretty much what I live for.

You'll notice that I only have pictures for three of the four museums I went to today. The Gaudi Exhibition didn't allow photography, and I wanted to be respectful of that direction. There are a million pictures online about Gaudi, his history, his workshop, and his architecture. Feel free to do a bit of perusing on your own. I definitely think it's worthwhile.

Archaeology Museum of Barcelona 

This museum was so worth the money. It's small-ish, and most of what they have is pottery, but for the six euros, I feel like I walked away knowing a lot more about Barcelona's ancient history than I had known. Maybe it helps that I looked at the pottery and saw how they would have been made, thrilled at the craftsmanship, and excited that these examples of everyday items are still around thousands of years after they were made. Or maybe it's just because it's all damn cool.

Art Museum

Not going to lie. I went a little ape-shit at all of the pictures of books I found here in the Romanesque Art section. MOST of my pictures are close-ups of the books that you see in the following photos. I'll post a separate blog post on those for my fellow bibliophiles. That being said, I was pleased to see two Cranach paintings (my least favorite two, but take what's given), and a delightful picture of what appears to be a gentleman very comfortable with his feminine side from the 17th century. Not to mention the portrait of a black man. Representation matters.

History of Barcelona Museum

You understand what history means when the historical museum of your city is housed in a Roman-era building that was built on top of three additional times. Yeah, I mean, the Des Moines History Museum is cool and all, but damn.... I visited this with my friend Isaac who has been showing me around his city. He explained a good bit of what I saw, but my background in experimental archaeology actually gave me a bit of a leg up on a few things. (Like the drop spindle that wasn't marked for what it was, or the thimbles that he couldn't figure out the English word for. Because why would he, really?)