Dalí Museums

"In this privileged place the real and the sublime almost meet. My mystical paradise starts on the plains of the Empordà, surrounded by the Les Alberes hills, and reaches plenitude in Cadaqués Bay. This landscape is my ongoing inspiration."
The Dalinian Triangle is the geometrical figure that would appear on a map of Catalonia if we were to draw a line between the municipalities of Púbol, Portlligat and Figueres. These three localities recount for us the trajectory of an internationally renowned artist who was nevertheless entirely linked to this territory. This space, concentrated in a territory of scarcely 40 square kilometres, contains the elements that make up the Dalinian universe: its museums, landscape, light, architecture, customs, mythology, gastronomy, etc., essential for understanding the life and work of Salvador Dalí.

The Dalinian Triangle allows an exploration of the universe of Dalí and serves as a gateway to a multiple universe of knowledge and experiences for those who visit it.
The Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres, the largest surrealistic object in the world, occupies the building of the former Municipal Theatre, a XIX century construction which was destroyed at the end of the Spanish Civil War. On its ruins Salvador Dalí decided to create his museum. "Where, if not in my own city, should the most extravagant and solid examples of my art remain, if not where? The Municipal Theatre, or what was left of it, seemed to me to be very appropriate for three reasons: the first, because I am an eminently theatrical painter: the second, because the Theatre is in front of the church where I was baptized and the third because it was precisely in the lobby of the Theatre that I had my first exhibition of paintings".
The Dalí Theatre Museum are three museum areas:
- The first is formed by the old burnt out theatre converted into a Theatre-Museum in accordance with the criteria and design of Salvador Dalí himself (rooms 1 to 18). This space is a unique art object where each part is an intrinsic part of the whole.
- The second is the complex of rooms formed as a result of the progressive extensions (rooms 19 to 22).
- The thrid includes a collection of jewels made by the artist between 1941 and 1970 (rooms 23-25).


The Gala Dalí Castle in Púbol, open to the public since 1996, allows visitors to discover a medieval building in which Salvador Dalí lent material form to an exuberant creative effort with his mind set on one person, Gala, and on one function, to make a place suitable for his wife’s rest and refuge. The passage of time led to this place being turned between 1982 and 1984 into Salvador Dalí’s last workshop and the mausoleum for his muse.

Figuring in documents since the 11th century, the basic structure of the present building, arranged around a narrow inner courtyard, dates from the second half of the 14th century and beginning of the 15th century. The castle includes: Gala's private rooms, rooms 1 to 11; the garden, spaces 14 and 15; the Delme or crypt for Gala, room 12; and room 7, dedicated to temporary exhibitions.


The Portlligat House and workshop was Salvador Dalí’s only fixed abode, the place in which he normally lived and worked up till 1982 when, upon Gala’s death, he took up residence at Púbol .

Salvador Dalí moved to Portlligat in 1930, into a small fisherman’s hut, having been attracted by the landscape, the light and the isolation of the place. Taking that initial construction as a basis, he created his house over the course of forty years. As he defined it himself, it was “like a true biological structure (...). Each new pulse in our life has its own new cell, a room”.

Three different areas can be distinguished in the house: the part where the couple’s more private life was lived, on the ground floor and rooms 7 to 12; the studio, rooms 5 and 6, with numerous objects related with artistic activity; and courtyards and outside areas, from 14 to 20, designed more for public life.