Palau Macaya
Modernist merchant's palace of a stark white sgraffito facade and a skylit courtyard, now a public think-and-culture centre.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Palau Macaya in Barcelona starts with a small stone joke above the carriage entrance, a man pedaling a bicycle, carved by Eusebi Arnau as a portrait of the architect Josep Puig i Cadafalch, caught cycling between building sites in the late 1890s. It follows the cotton merchant Roma Macaya, who bought land on the new Passeig de Sant Joan in 1899 and wanted a palace rather than a house, and traces the building through its finish in 1901, the Macaya family's departure in 1914, and its stint housing an institute for deaf, blind, and mute children.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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