Things to do in , Catalonia: The Best Museums

The Episcopal Museum of Vic (MEV), founded in 1891, houses a magnificent collection of medieval art with paintings and sculpture from the Catalan Romanesque and Gothic periods. The collections of precious metals, textiles, wrought ironwork, glass and ceramics offer a comprehensive journey through the history of liturgical and decorative art in Catalonia. This highly prized collection, including over 29,000 pieces, is exhibited in a new building on a site adjoining the cathedral, equipped with state-of-the-art exhibition facilities. Due to the exceptional interest of the museum's collections, in 2001 the museum was declared a museum of national interest by the Government of Catalonia.

Magic mon del tren is a venue dedicated to the hobby of collecting and model-making. This new facility in our country attempts to introduce the unknown miniature train world to the general public of any age. Josep Arumi Bou has been a Marklin train collector since 1984. During all this time he has been making up an important collection of locomotives and passenger and freight cars in gauge HO (1:87) together with other gauge 1 elements. On the ground floor of his house he had several glass cabinets containing a part of this collection and two gauge HO layouts. The oldest one, built in 1991 using M railway tracks, recreated the stream railway world. The other one, more recently built using K and C railway tracks, recreated the modern electric traction railway. His dearest wish to expand his collection and to go on working with railway models and layouts, together with his aim to show it to both model train enthusiasts and to the general public, led him to design and build a big railway center: Magic mon del tren (The magical world of trains). It hosts his private collection and two big layouts: a gauge HO operating layout and a gauge 1 layout under construction. This exhibition (museum) is placed in a modern three-story building of 1000 m2 . It meets all the safety and access standards and it is well-equipped with the latest technologies.

The Ter Museum is housed in an old spinning factory dating back to 1841, at the point where the Manlleu Industrial Canal, one of the most emblematic symbols of Catalan industrialisation, ends its course of almost two kilometres. This dynamic space now provides visitors with 1.500 square metres of exhibitions and many activities to learn about the unique industrialisation process experienced in this corner of inland Catalonia on the Ter riverbank, as well as about the biodiversity of our river and other Mediterranean rivers. The Ter Museum houses the Center for the Study of Mediteranean Rivers (Centre d'Estudis dels Rius Mediterranis), wich carries out research and dissemination work on our natural river heritage.

The Muleteers's Museum - collection Antoni Ros explains the evolution of transport both goods and people using energies of blood and, at the same time, it shows the relationships between different trades that helped the development of the done muleteer in Igualada. The broad representation of tools and utensils that accumulate these offices, together with the presence of different carts, carriages, saddles and fittings made of Antoni Ros collection a veritable Museum of Arts and crafts applied to the world of transport in Modern Catalonia.

The Technical Museum of Manresa is located in the old water tanks of the city. A magnificent half-buried building that houses three big spaces, covered with stone and which are supported by thick walls and central pillars. Two of the three deposits host permanent exhibitions of the museum; one dedicated to the Sequia, the canal built in fourteenth century, and which bring water to the city. This canal helps deeply the Pla de Bages to make it a prosperous region of Catalonia. The other exhibition is one of the most important examples of European ribbons. An industry that has close ties to the city and the region. With this exhibition will be able to experience and understand what life was like in the factories since sixteenth century to the present. Also in the museum run all kinds of parallel activities, such as guided tours, workshops, family activities, specialist visits, and so on.

The Capellades Paper Mill Museum is housed in the “Moli de la Vila”, an old paper mill, conserved to resemble a typical 18th century paper mill. Next To the museum, there is a small lake, known as the “Bassa”, which is a natural source of the crystalline water once used by the town’s sixteen paper mills. In the museum's workshop you can make paper by your own hands!