Un palau de Barcelona

Un palau de Barcelona is the extraordinary biography of the Savassona Palace, the space that has served as the home of the Ateneu Barcelonès institution for over a century.

With an expert and affectionate perspective, Mateu Barba, an architect who has been part of the team that carried out the latest renovation of this iconic building, provides a unique perspective. Delving into the physical alterations —the walls, the staircases, the invaluable paintings by El Vigatà, whose preservation has not always been assured by the passage of time— he contextualizes them within the various historical, social, and political transformations that have shaped the palace's immediate surroundings. These transformations have been reflected in the construction of the palace by Josep Francesc Ferrer and with the remodeling by Elies Rogent, Josep Font i Gumà, and Josep M. Jujol, and the resurgence of the sixties, up to the present day.

Interwoven with the two-hundred-year history of the owners and the artists who have contributed their talents, and tracing some intimacies and anecdotes of the house and its inhabitants, Un palau de Barcelona is also a story of the city that evolves in parallel with the evolution of the building.