I am back from my trip to Barcelona. I was lucky to get the narrow window of oportunity when Dublin airport was not closed because of volcanic activity in Iceland.It was busy 6 days, many things to see. I spent whole day in Porta Ventura theme park, lots of great rides, almost no queues, not bad shows and nice sets and decorations ( but not as good as in Disneyland Paris). I went to many museums looking for models in all of them. Great collection of plaster models can be find in La Pedrera designed by Antoni Gaudi. They beautifully explain shapes and construction of his masterpieces. In Sagrada Familia you can see fragments of gigantic maquette of the temple and smaller models explaining its details. Many people is working on its renovation because Gaudi’s workshop was destroyed during revolution. I like the idea of designing with models, it was more sculptural process.
I went to the small chocolate museum, with big sweet sculptures of people, buildings and characters from asterix, lucky lucke and other comics and animated movies. I found there this chocolate model of house from movie “Up” and I was really surprised with its low quality when you compare it to other exhibits. It was smaller and without name of the artist, so I presume it was made by museum staff on one of the workshops. I decided to take a photo of it anyways.
This reminded me about my little figurines waiting for paint. Russell was almost ready before my departure so expect photos soon.
Browse for books about Gaudi on Half.com
It was very busy 5 days break. I visited most of main tourist spots ( Versail, Eiffel Tower, Disneyland ), but the most interesting place I would like to recommend to you modelmakers was Palais de Chaillot opposite to Eiffel Tower. I went to see its three pernament galleries.
The Galerie des Moulages, presenting life-sized fragments of French architectural masterpieces from the 12th to 18th centuries cast in plaster. It was filled with amazing details copied from the most monumental buildings in France collected in one place. But the best of all were museum quality plaster architectural models of french buildings ! I took lots of photos of this part of exhibition, you can see some of them here.
Second was the Galerie des Peintures Murales et des Vitraux (wall paintings and stained-glass windows), based on the same principle of reproducing outstanding pictorial works from historic monuments. Each piece of work was shown with little model of the original building .
There was also a huge model of castle which could very well serve as wargame table from players’ wildest dream.
Lastly the new Galerie Moderne et Contemporaine, devoted to architecture from 1850 to the present day. This was a long room full of architectural models of all kind. Unfortunately it was forbiden to take pictures in this part of museum 
I only managed to shot first two models and they were not the most impresive ones.
I would definetly recommend to put this museum on “to see list” for everybody who is going to Paris and is interested in architecture or models.
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