Gallivanters Guide

Architect’s Dream, Barcelona Pavilion ‘A Modernist Classic’.

‘Located on Montjuic, a hill overlooking the harbour of Barcelona, the pavilion commissioned by the Weimar Republic; and its job was to advertise a new, progressive, democratic and modern Germany.

Set on a travertine plinth, its gleaming, offset walls created subtle spatial illusions enhanced by sunlight, and moonlight, shimmering and sparkling from both the rich building materials and from the rectangular pool that permeated the structure.

For more than half a century, the ‘Barcelona Pavilion’ haunted the imagination of modern architects worldwide. Here was one of the most enticing, beautiful and refined buildings of all time, and yet it had stood for no more than a few months before it was pulled down.

Today, the perfect replica is open to the public everyday, a design as exquisite in its own modern way as a Greek temple, and so very happily sited in what, by common consent, one of the world’s greatest cities’.



@ German Pavilion, Barcelona