An Olympian Dream

Have you ever dreamed of a place you have never been? I did that several times in the last twenty years or so. There was a beautiful, domed building than resembled the U. S. Capitol, but it was surrounded with gardens and palaces—just beautiful.

Then, when we first came to Barcelona in 2014 our bus tour took us to the place. I recognized the building—the one in my dream. It was raining. Our guide told us it was a building constructed as the centerpiece of the 1926 Olympics in Barcelona. I took a crummy picture of the domed building in the rain, and I loved to go back and look at it repeatedly, as poor as the photo is, and I remembered that I had dreamed about the place.

On a subsequent visit to Barcelona, a Hop-On-Hop-Off Bus took us by the building again, and I got a better picture, but I was with people who didn’t particularly want to get off the bus to visit the building. The guide told us it was an art gallery now, but it is still occasionally used for diplomatic meetings, conferences of heads of state and other official gatherings.

On this beautiful spring day, however, we went inside. And it was glorious. The Museo Nacional de Arte Catalán was everything I had hoped it would be. It is noted for its collection of Romanesque and Medieval Art. Many of its exhibits consist of frescoes peeled from the walls of Christian churches from the fifth to the seventh centuries. We’re talking old Visigothic stuff! I felt as though I had been plopped down in the middle of a Disney World made especially for me.

It is fascinating to see how the depictions of Jesus and the Apostles changed in the post-Roman world. They evolved into the medieval representations, and finally to those of the Renaissance. The displays of the decorations found in the apses of old cathedrals are again displayed in re-created apses, so that the geometry of the design is still intact. Some of the exhibits of later art show portraiture and some non-ecclesiastical art of Spanish masters such as Velasquez and El Greco. All of it was magnificent.

Instead of visiting the modern art, Glenda and I found an elevator taking us up into the dome of the building and out onto an observation deck. There, with the whole city below us, we delighted to see the old city of Barcino, which we had visited yesterday. We finished up with a sandwich made from jamon iberico and a Spanish version of brie cheese we bought in the rotunda’s restaurant.

We snagged a taxi driven by a woman from Peru. She brought us to our hotel and told us that on the top floor there is a Peruvian Restaurant, Maymanta, whose chef is known worldwide for his creative Peruvian cuisine. We plan to have dinner there tonight.Read more