Most intimate Dalí

After a thirty-year journey, Salvador Dalí’s Family Home has become a reality, completing the Dalinian Triangle perfectly, together with the House-Museum in Portlligat , the Theatre-Museum in Figueres and the Gala Dalí Castle in Pubol. Take a look inside, with that sense of curiosity and esotericism that awakens when entering someone’s home for the first time. The space, the energy, the items surrounding you seem to give clues about the most intimate lives of its tenants. So, when you leave, you have the feeling that you know them a little better. Salvador Dalí’s Family Home in Figueres achieves the same effect with a unique experience that complements the House-Museum in Portlligat and the Theatre-Museum in Figueres. And it has taken many years for this to be possible. 

Figueres natives should know this by heart, but for the rest of the world we remind you that Salvador Dalí was born on 11 May 1904 in Carrer Monturiol, quite a central street in the capital of Alt Empordà. Specifically, he took his first breaths at number 20, a Catalan Art Nouveau building that had been built six years earlier and in which several families lived. On the ground floor, Dalí’s father worked as a notary and the family home was on the floor above. Above them lived Dalí’s grandmother and aunt.

When Dalí was about to turn four, he welcomed a new member of the family: his sister Anna. The two children would spend many hours on the terrace, which was large and had unbeatable views of the Marquesa gardens in front of the building. Flowers of all colours, slender and well-watered plants, birds looking for a bit of shade… This area of the flat was so important in the family’s life that, when new buildings began to take over the grounds of the gardens and the terrace lost its views, they moved house. Dalí had spent the first eight years of his life in this building, which remained there without having anything more to do with the artist… until it was decided that it was necessary to rescue the memory of who had lived there. 

Given the significance of this space in the painter’s memory, Figueres City Council has spent thirty years trying to recover it. And it did not settle for just the notary’s office or the family flat, but managed to restore the entire building. It has been a collective effort that has finally come to fruition and will surely have as many queues at the entrance as the other locations dedicated to the painter. And who wouldn’t be interested in exploring Dalí’s childhood home?

At the entrance, visitors are given an audio guide which is automatically synchronised with each room to save you the trouble of having to punch in numbers. The immersive journey begins with the help of a narrator who describes the life of the young Salvador and his family and, of course, one of the first stops is the notary’s office, visited by important people from Figueres at the beginning of the 20th century. Climbing the stairs that Dalí must have trodden so many times as a child, screens conjure up the magnificent terrace where he and his sister used to play so much. Your own private guide talks about Dalí’s mother, aunt and grandmother, who were very influential in the life of the future artist, but also about his uncle, who had a bookshop on the Rambla in Barcelona and whenever he came to visit would appear with European art magazines under his arm. But life goes on and, as you head up the stairs, Dalí gets older. 

The visit continues through his formative years, starting in Figueres and travelling to Madrid, where he met artists such as Luis Buñuel and Federico García Lorca. You will also discover his first meeting with Gala and realise the importance she was to have in the artist’s life. Then you take a car and a plane to get closer to Paris, London and New York, where Dalí mixed with prominent figures of the time, such as Alfred Hitchcock, Walt Disney and Andy Warhol.

Dalí speaks to us and, unable to resist, we are transported inside his head. Setting aside his eccentricities, you learn about some of his deepest thoughts on the applied arts, but also on physics, mathematics and the horror of the atomic bomb. Through the audio guide, but also through holograms, screens and immersive sounds, you will discover the man behind one of the most recognisable moustaches in history.

Completing the Dalinian Triangle

Just five minutes’ walk from the house where he was born stands the imposing Dalí Theatre-Museum. Everything you see there —from the large transparent dome to the impressive sculptural installations— came from the mind of the genius who chose to be buried there, surrounded by his diverse creative imagination. After this tour of the painter’s long artistic career, you can go to Portlligat, where you can visit the Salvador Dalí House-Museum. What had originally been a humble fisherman’s shack, was gradually expanded and adapted by the artist to meet his needs over the course of forty years. The result is a wonderful labyrinthine tour through the most intimate spaces he shared with Gala, his eternal muse. There you have it: the house where Dalí was born, the house that saw him grow as an artist and his last great work, where he decided to rest forever. An essential tour to get to know the authentic Dalí!