Barcelona boasts an immense cultural heritage. The city’s past is very closely linked to a body of culture and art that has become a source of inspiration for the generations of today. The citizens of Barcelona know how to enjoy culture in all its facets and they are great promoters of culture; as a Mediterranean city, Barcelona offers a wide range of recreational options and these embrace all the disciplines related to the world of culture. In the city you can find one-hundred-year-old theatres dedicated to opera and music such as the Gran Teatre del Liceu and the Modernista Palau de la Música Catalana. There are also excellent and modern auditoria as well as major institutions devoted to the plastic arts, centres catering for the most avant-garde art forms, venues for scenic innovation, theatres staging the classics and art galleries and spaces devoted to heritage art.
To all these we can add the various innovative initiatives that give free rein to the most audacious and ground-breaking creativity such as the Barcelona Lab, the newly-invented Reactable musical instrument, the Barcelona Design Hub and the Art Factories. The city maintains close links with the most traditional rituals but it also promotes festivities that are completely original as well as others of an almost ancestral nature, all of which goes to show that culture is very much alive despite the passing of the years. Good examples of these traditions include the correfoc (running with fireworks), the feast day of Sant Jordi and the many literary festivals that take place in the city, and the charming spectacle of the dancing egg known as the ou com balla, which is celebrated at Corpus Christi each year. Barcelona is most definitely a city of culture, and its culture is always alive and inspiring, and open to the influences and contributions of artists from home and abroad.
