Palau de la Música Catalana

If Gaudí is Barcelona's most famous modernista architect, Lluís Domènech i Montaner was arguably its most accomplished, and the Palau de la Música Catalana is his masterpiece. Built between 1905 and 1908 as the home of the Orfeó Català, the choral society at the heart of the Catalan cultural revival, it was paid for largely by popular subscription and designed to celebrate music as something belonging to everyone. The result is overwhelming in the best sense. Squeezed into a narrow street in the Sant Pere quarter, the façade bristles with mosaic columns, busts of Palestrina, Bach, Beethoven and Wagner, and a great sculptural group representing Catalan popular song. Inside, the concert hall is a box of light: walls of stained glass let daylight pour in from both sides, and in the ceiling hangs an enormous inverted dome of stained glass, golden at its centre and blue around the edge, like a sun surrounded by sky. The stage is framed by sculpture — on one side a bust of the composer Anselm Clavé beneath a flowering tree, on the other Beethoven beneath Wagner's Valkyries riding out of the clouds — and the back wall is lined with eighteen muses whose upper bodies are sculpted in relief while their lower halves dissolve into mosaic, each playing a different instrument. UNESCO listed the Palau as world heritage in 1997. You can visit in two ways: on a daytime tour, guided or with an audio guide, which shows you the foyer, the Lluís Millet hall and the auditorium with light streaming in; or at a concert, which might be a symphony, a choir, flamenco, guitar or jazz.

The building's story is bound up with Catalan identity. The Orfeó Català was founded in 1891 by Lluís Millet and Amadeu Vives to revive Catalan choral music, and the Palau was its manifesto in brick, iron, glass and ceramic — a building by Catalan craftsmen, for Catalan music, open to working people as well as the bourgeoisie. Domènech i Montaner used a steel frame to free the walls for glass, an approach that made the hall one of the earliest curtain-wall buildings in Europe. In the late twentieth century a sympathetic extension by Òscar Tusquets added space next to the old church of Sant Francesc de Paula, and the Petit Palau chamber hall sits underground beside it.

Visiting well: tours last around fifty minutes to an hour, run in several languages through the day and include a short musical demonstration on the hall's organ in some formats; they are timed and fill up, so book ahead. Morning tours catch the best light through the stained glass. If you can, also come back for a performance: the programme ranges from the resident choirs and international orchestras to popular guitar and flamenco recitals aimed at visitors, and while the acoustics are lively rather than perfect, hearing music under that glowing ceiling is unforgettable. Seats in the upper levels are cheaper and offer a closer view of the skylight; dress smart-casual.

The Palau sits on the edge of Sant Pere and El Born, five minutes from the cathedral, so it fits easily into a Gothic Quarter or Picasso Museum day. Have a drink in the foyer bar before a concert, among the mosaic columns and glass, and explore the nearby Mercat de Santa Caterina, with its wave-like, multicoloured roof by Enric Miralles and Benedetta Tagliabue — a modern answer to modernisme. For architecture lovers, pairing the Palau with Domènech i Montaner's other great work, the Recinte Modernista de Sant Pau near the Sagrada Família, is the perfect counterpoint to a day of Gaudí.