Fodor's Expert Review Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya

Housed in the imposingly domed, towered, frescoed, and columned Palau Nacional, built in 1929 as the centerpiece of the International Exposition, this superb museum was renovated between 1985 and 1992 by Gae Aulenti, architect of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. In 2004, the museum's four holdings (Romanesque, Gothic, the photography collection, and the Cambó Collection—an eclectic trove, including a Goya, donated by Francesc Cambó) were joined by the 19th- and 20th-century collection of Catalan Impressionist and Moderniste painters. With this influx of artistic treasure, the Museu Nacional has become Catalonia's grand central museum.

Pride of place goes to the Romanesque exhibition, the world's finest collection of Romanesque frescoes, altarpieces, and wood carvings, most of them rescued from chapels in the Pyrenees during the 1920s to save them from deterioration, theft, and art dealers. Many, such as the famous Cristo de Taüll fresco (from the church of Sant Climent de Taüll in Taüll), have been painstakingly removed from crumbling walls of abandoned sites and remounted on ingenious frames that exactly reproduce the contours of their original settings. The stunning central hall of the museum contains an enormous pillared and frescoed cupola.