Barcelona Guide
The Ramblas
Palau de la Virreina
Address: 99 Rambla Estudis, on the corner of c/del Carme
Website: www.bcn.cat/virreinacentredelaimatge
Telephone: 933 161 000
Opening time: Tues– Fri 11am–2pm & 4–8.30pm, Sat 11am–8.30pm, Sun 11am–3pm
Price: admission usually charged
The graceful eighteenth-century Palau de la Virreina (Virreina Palace) is set back slightly from the Ramblas. Commissioned by a Peruvian viceroy, Manuel Amat, and named after the wife who survived him, its five Ramblas-facing bays are adorned with pilasters and Rococo windows. Today the palace is used by the city council's culture department, with a ground-floor shop featuring locally produced arts and crafts and souvenirs and a walk-in information centre and ticket office for cultural events.
Two galleries are used for changing exhibitions of contemporary art and photography , while in the courtyard are usually displayed the city's two official Carnival giants (gegants vells), representing the celebrated thirteenth-century Catalan king, Jaume I, and his wife Violant. The origin of Catalunya's outsized (five-metre-high) wood-and-plaster Carnival figures is unclear, though they probably once formed part of the entertainment at medieval travelling fairs. The first record of specific city giants is in 1601 – they were later used to entertain the city's orphans but are now an integral part of Barcelona's festival parades.