Palau de la Música with a guide: four crafts in one hall

The Palau de la Música Catalana makes more sense when you know what to look at, and that is what the guide brings. The hall works because four different crafts operate at once on the same space: sculpture, mosaic, stained glass and wrought iron. None dominates the others and none is relegated to ornament; decoration and structure are one and the same. That interplay is what makes the building the masterpiece of Catalan Art Nouveau. And it isn't a museum hall: concerts are held here regularly, so everything you see is designed to accompany the music playing below. The guided tour covers the interior and explains how something like this came to be built in Barcelona. The ticket cannot be canceled.