Poble Espanyol

The Poble Espanyol (literally, Spanish town) is an open-air architectural museum in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, approximately 400 metres away from the Fountains of Montjuïc. Built for the 1929 Barcelona International Exposition, the museum consists of 117 full-scale buildings replicated from different places in the Iberian Peninsula, joined forming a small town recreating urban atmospheres of disparate places in Spain. It also contains a theater, restaurants, artisan workshops and a museum of contemporary art.

History
The museum was built for the 1929 Barcelona International Exposition as an exhibit of the architecture and townscapes found in different places of the Iberian Peninsula, mostly from Spain. The idea was promoted by the Catalan architect Puig i Cadafalch and the project was realized by architects Francesc Folguera and Ramon Reventós i Farrarons, art critic and painter Miquel Utrillo and painter Francesc Xavier Nogués i Casas.

The four professionals visited over 600,000 sites to collect examples in an attempt to synthesize characteristics that might be attributed to the Iberian Peninsula. In reality, though, this sort of patched-up ensemble is proof of the wide variety, and therefore the utmost impossibility, to fulfill its claim to be a ‘Spanish’ town, because there is not a unified style or solid common traits shared among the different cultures that form Spain.