Salvador Dalí House-Museum (Portlligat)

In 1930, the Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí (1904-1989) bought a small fisherman's hut in the isolated village of Portlligat, Catalonia, drawn to the quality of the light and the surrounding landscape. He intended it to be a home for himself and his muse and partner Gala. Over the next forty years, he and she expanded and developed the space, taking the 'Bear Lobby' as the visitors' starting point for a series of labyrinthine spaces. Each has their own individual concepts, but every room looks out onto the Portlligat bay, which Dalí painted many times. Among the last areas to be completed was the Swimming Pool, finished in 1971, and quickly established as the centre of Dalí's social life.

After Gala's death in 1982, Dalí left Portlligat to establish himself at the 'Gala Dalí Castle', his wife's former private home in Púbol. He himself died in 1989, and the Portlligat house became a museum in 1997, after the establishment of the Dalí Foundation. The museum now preserves and displays all the original house interiors. As of 2009, visitors can also access to the additional studio space Dalí created in the outdoor olive grove. Here, his famous 'glass floor' allowed him to study feet and foreshortening.