Dalinian Triangle

The Dalinian Triangle is a route joining up the three key venues in l'Empordà where you can learn all about Salvador Dalí's life and art.

The journey begins in the genius's birthplace of Figueres, home to the Dalí Theatre-Museum, continues on to Cadaqués and the small fishing village of Portlligat where the Salvador Dalí House-Museum is sited, and ends in La Pera where Púbol Castle stands.

Figueres is the capital of Alt Empordà and the great cultural, service and communications hub of northern Catalonia. The Dalí Theatre-Museum is its main tourist attraction where you can find out more about the artist's output. A neoclassical building put up between 1848 and 1850 as an Italian-style theatre, it was used as Figueres's municipal theatre during the second half of the 19th century and the first part of the 20th century until it was destroyed in a fire late in the Spanish Civil War.

Salvador Dalí turned it into the Dalí Theatre-Museum in 1974. It brings together a large part of the painter's work: impressionism, futurism, cubism and surrealism, including paintings such as Port Alguer (1924), The Spectre of Sex Appeal (1932), Soft Self-Portrait with Fried Bacon (1941), Poetry of America The Cosmic Athletes (1943), Atomic Leda (1949) and Galatea of the Spheres (1952). His output is blended with the creation of the building, which the artist in turn envisioned as a great work of art featuring intriguing areas such as the Mae West room, the Palau del Vent room, the monument to Francesc Pujols and the Rainy Taxi.

Cadaqués is a small fishing town nestled in the heart of Cap de Creus in the midst of wild, untamed nature. The tiny village of Portlligat to the northeast of Cadaqués is the odd and isolated place where Dalí chose to live and paint a large part of his work in what is now the Salvador Dalí House-Museum. It consists of a group of fishermen's shacks that the painter bought from 1930 to the 1970s and which he remodelled and decorated over those forty years in a maze-like structure with small spaces joined together by narrow corridors, dead ends and more.

The surrealist visit takes in Dalí's studio, library, private rooms, garden and swimming pool. The ensemble strives to keep things just as they were when the genius from L'Empordà lived there. Portlligat Bay is also fascinating, a peaceful haven sheltered from the roughest of seas.

Finally, Púbol is a hamlet in the municipality of La Pera in El Baix Empordà where in 1969 Dalí bought the old 11th-century medieval castle which had been the seat of the barony of Púbol. This purchase and its subsequent renovation meant that he kept the promise he'd made to Gala to make her the queen of a castle. The Gala-Dalí Castle House-Museum in Púbol was to be the refuge of the painter's muse and he put a great deal of creative effort into restoring and decorating it. The rooms include the old kitchen converted into a bathroom, the piano room, the collection of Gala's haute couture dresses, the Cadillac that belonged to the couple and the crypt where the muse was buried. The castle was Salvador Dalí's last studio between 1982 and 1984.