Inside the Palau de Mar , this worthwhile museum takes you from the Stone Age through to the early 1980s. It is a busy hotchpotch of dioramas, artefacts, videos, models, documents and interactive bits: all up, an entertaining exploration of 2000 years of Catalan history.
See how the Romans lived, listen to Arab poetry from the time of the Muslim occupation of the city, peer into the dwelling of a Dark Ages family in the Pyrenees, try to mount a knight’s horse or lift a suit of armour.
When you have had enough of all this, descend into a civil-war air-raid shelter, watch a video in Catalan on post-Franco Catalonia, or head upstairs to the first-rate rooftop restaurant and cafe, 1881 .
The temporary exhibitions are often as interesting as the permanent display. Outside the museum, you'll find a string of elegant open-air restaurants serving up classic seafood dishes.
