Great Hall, National Palace Barcelona
Behind the lobby is the Grand Hall or Oval Hall, which due to its large size was intended for use in major events, from the official opening ceremony of the Exhibition to, for example, concerts, gala dances or congresses. This lounge has a useful free space of 2,300 square meters, in addition to a tier with a capacity for about 1,300 people.
It is covered by a large oval vault lined with cassettes, and large columns dominate the decoration, columns that have the wood adorned with grotesque elements of the Renaissance style. The painting is straightforward and consists of very light borders and plant ornaments placed on all the arches and profiles of the vaults they form. Another pictorial element of the hall is the fifty-six small shields that fill the spaces between the arches and represent the fifty Spanish provinces existing in 1929; the remaining six shields contain musical instruments and are placed on the organ side.
At the Universal Exhibition of Barcelona (1888), two electric organs had already been installed in the Hall of the Regent Queen of the Palace of Fine Arts; This initiative was faithful to a tradition that had also taken place in other exhibitions, such as in Glasgow in 1901, in Saint Louis in 1904 or in San Diego in 1915. Thus, it was considered appropriate to install one in the new exhibition as well. The organ was manufactured by the German house Walcker and Cia. house founded by Eberhard Frederich Walcker in 1820; the mechanisms were all electric and consisted of 154 registersspread over five keyboards and a thirty-two note pedalboard with over ten thousand flute tubes. It was opened by Professor Alfred Sittard on July 6, 1929. It was restored and expanded in 1955, adding two and a half hundred more to the original tubes. With this extension the organ, of 34 meters in length by 11 of height, happened to have six keyboards.
National Palace Barcelona
The Palau Nacional, located in Montjuïc (Barcelona), is a palace built between 1926 and 1929 for the Barcelona International Exhibition of 1929, and since 1934 has housed the National Art Museum of Catalonia. It was the main building of the Exhibition, designed by Eugenio Cendoya and Enric Catà, under the supervision of Pere Domènech i Roura, and rejected the initial project of Puig i Cadafalch and Guillem Busquets. In its Oval Hall the opening ceremony of the Exhibition, chaired by Alfonso XIII and Queen Victoria Eugènia, took place.
It has an area of 32,000 m². Style classic inspired by the Renaissance Spanish, has a rectangular plan with two side sections and a rear square with a large dome elliptical in the middle. The waterfalls and fountains on the steps of the Palace were designed by Carles Buïgas, and nine large projectors were installed that still emit intense beams of light today, writing the name of the city in the sky.
The National Palace was dedicated to showing an exhibition of Spanish art with more than 5,000 works from all over Spain. In its decoration – in the nineteenth-century style, contrary to the classicism of architectural work -, several artists took part, such as the sculptors Enric Casanovas, Josep Dunyach, Frederic Marès and Josep Llimona, and the painters Francesc d’Assís Galí, Josep de Togores, Manuel Humbert, Josep Obiols, Joan Colom and Francesc Labarta. Since 1934 it has been home to the National Art Museum of Catalonia.
From 1996 to 2004 the palace was enlarged by Gae Aulenti, Enric Steegman, Josep Benedito and Agustí Obiol with the aim of creating spaces to accommodate all the works in the collection.
Architecture
The model of the National Palace, is unified in a style that at the time was called the Spanish Renaissance, with the air of academic classicism; in other words, the bet is the result of different functional forms and constructive procedures, solved with the technical language of the Barcelona School of Architecture of the second decade of the twentieth century, which was responsible for guaranteeing the buildings for the Exhibition.
The building was also a combination of traditional symmetry- based systems, clearly stated in their composition, and building procedures with more modern materials and techniques, such as the use of serial elements. and of concrete.
The building is organized on two floors: one as a base, and the main floor with double pilasters framing large blind wall panels. In the northeast, it also has a basement that was originally intended for kitchens at the time of its construction. There was a set of rooms comprising the Throne Room, with rooms for the King and Queen, and the museum section in the front of the building. At the rear were the party area and a small tea room, or restaurant, located on the body that protrudes behind the Great Hall. The facade consists of a protruding central body and two lateral bodies: the central one is crowned by a large dome, reminiscent of Saint Paul’s Cathedral.of London or that of the Basilica of St. Peter’s in the Vatican, with two smaller domes on both sides. To the four angles, in the part that corresponds to the Great Hall, are towers that bear a certain similarity with those of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela and the Giralda of Seville.
Interior decoration
The Palau’s architects’ project considered architectural decorative elements, such as columns, pediments, or moldings, but also interior decorations that included wall paintings and sculptures. All the ornamental part of these spaces depended on the Organizing Committee of the Exhibition, and an additional grant of 1,200,000 pesetas was granted. The director of the project was Lluís Plandiura, curator of Fine Arts at the Exhibition. The commissions began during the winter of 1928; therefore, the artists had only about three months to complete their work. The style of the artistic works belonged to the current that was predominant in Catalonia at that time, the so-called Noucentisme, which manifested especially in the main dome, the smaller domes, the Throne Room, the Great Hall and the Tea Room..
Rehabilitation
The architects Eugenio Cendoya, Enric Catà and Pere Domènech i Roura built the Palace as a temporary building for the 1929 Exhibition. In 1934 it was transformed into the headquarters of the Art Museum of Catalonia, with the rooms on the ground floor undergoing the most important transformation. The architect Ramon Reventóswas in charge of this rehabilitation in which the excessive decorations were suppressed and smooth walls were constructed to be able to hang the paintings. An outside water intake network was also performed to prevent moisture leaks and cracks in the walls were repaired.
The National Palace has been the subject of many and diverse interventions. A few years later the rooms on the upper floor were left unused after the Spanish Civil War due to the damage caused to the roofs. These were repaired during the rehabilitation in the 1960’s to host the great exhibition “Romanesque art” under the direction of the director of the art museums of Barcelona Joan Ainaud de Lasarte.
In the 1980’s, the Italian architect Gae Aulenti was hired to solve problems with the display of the large number of works of art being accumulated and to adapt the spacious interior spaces, of high ceilings, to the its functions as showrooms. In 1990, with the help of Enric Steegman, several rehabilitation works were started that were longer than expected due to technical complications; the works were done in phases and the museum gradually opened its collections. On the occasion of the Barcelona 1992 Olympic Games, only part of the future museum and the refurbishment of the Great Hall could be presented, where the Opening Ceremony of the Olympiad was held.
In 2000 the last phase of reconstruction was started, in which the architect Josep Benedito collaborated. In 2003, a new temporary exhibition hall was inaugurated, and works were completed in 2004, with a total built-up area of 51,600 square meters, and thus the area added to the original building is 15,300 square meters. At the same time, the waterfalls in front of the Palace were restored. The definitive inauguration, by the kings of Spain, Juan Carlos I and Sofia of Greece, took place on December 16, 2004. This is a definitive structural intervention, which involves replacing the damaged elements and fixing the cornices in the building using titanium rods hidden in the structure.