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| La Sagrada Familia |
Having visited the Modenese Apennines in Italy
several times, many years ago, I once investigated the possibility of
organising a "Journey to a Site of Special Interest", based in Fanano – the City
of Stone sculpture – but it was during a short visit to Catalunya that the idea
of Geotourism and Geodiversity resurfaced again.
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| Park Güell |
With the main reason for my visit being to have a good look at the work of Antoni Gaudí and Salvador Dalí, my original plans didn’t include geology. With only a week to explore Barcelona, Girona and Figueres using public transport, there was simply no time to explore other places.
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| Geology Displays in the Mantorell Museum |
However, my visit coincided with the 125th anniversary of the laying of the foundation stone of La Sagrada Familia and an exhibition showed the main building stones used in its construction.
As this had been co-produced by the Barcelona
Museum of Geology, I pre-arranged a meeting with the curator and mineralogist, Carles Curto Mila. He was very keen to practice his English and we struck up a good relationship and talked for 2
hours, discussing his educational work with building stones and my Glowing Edges Designs, before he showed
me around the geology collections, which were then housed exclusively in the Martorell Museum.
It was one of the best geology museums that I
have seen, with numerous specimens laid out in old fashioned glass cabinets, together
with displays of fluorescent minerals, petrography and crystallography and a
separate gallery for the palaeontology.
During my visit, I noted that a group of young school children took great pleasure in seeing the various specimens on display - especially the fossils - which just shows that geology can be made interesting without modern interactive displays.
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| The Parc de la Ciutadella |
I was particularly interested to see the small collection of large blocks of rock, which were lined up along the front of the museum. Although very impressive in itself, this only represents the effort to reproduce a much larger collection of over 130 large rocks, which were once laid out in the gardens in front of the museum but which was completely destroyed in 1928.
Having visited the museum very early in my holiday, and being presented with copies of journals that described both the Sagrada Familia and the collection of large rocks in detail, my remaining time in Catalunya was given an unexpected slant. Walking around Barcelona for 3 days, I took good note of the variety of stones that I saw in the historic buildings and monuments and, at Park Güell, I caught a glimpse of the metamorphic rocks that underpin this fantastic place.
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