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The Four Columns

Buildings and structures completed in 1919Buildings and structures completed in 2010Buildings and structures demolished in 1928Buildings and structures in BarcelonaHistory of Barcelona
Josep Puig i Cadafalch buildingsMonumental columns in SpainMonuments and memorials in BarcelonaPolitics of BarcelonaSants-MontjuïcTourist attractions in Barcelona
Quatre Columnes
Quatre Columnes

The Four Columns ("Les Quatre Columnes" in Catalan) are four Ionic columns originally created by Josep Puig i Cadafalch in Barcelona, Spain. They were erected in 1919, where the Magic Fountain of Montjuïc now stands. They symbolized the four stripes of the Catalan senyera, and they were intended to become one of the main icons of Catalanism. Because of this, they were demolished in 1928 during Primo de Rivera's dictatorship, when all public Catalanist symbols were systematically removed in order to avoid their being noticed during the 1929 Universal Exposition, which was to take place on Montjuïc. Moreover, for these same political motives, Poble Espanyol (Spanish Village in Catalan), on the same hill, was the name given to the open-air museum formerly to be named Iberona – in homage to the Iberians, the first inhabitants of what is now Catalonia, Spain. Analogously for the nearby Plaça d'Espanya. In 1999, the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) commissioned the renowned Valencian sculptor Andreu Alfaro to create four similar columns for its Bellaterra Campus. In contrast to the original columns which were 20m high, these spiral up, 25 to 40 metres (82 to 131 ft) in height, in red granite.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article The Four Columns (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

The Four Columns
Plaça de Josep Puig i Cadafalch, Barcelona

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Wikipedia: The Four ColumnsContinue reading on Wikipedia

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N 41.370634 ° E 2.152102 °
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Palau de Victòria Eugènia (Pavelló 7)

Plaça de Josep Puig i Cadafalch
08001 Barcelona
Catalonia, Spain
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Quatre Columnes
Quatre Columnes
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Venetian Towers
Venetian Towers

The Venetian Towers (in Catalan: Torres Venecianes) is the popular name for a pair of towers on Avinguda de la Reina Maria Cristina at its junction with Plaça d'Espanya in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. There is one tower on either side of the street. The towers are 47m high, with a 7.2 metres square cross-section. The bottom section of each is built of artificial stone, the main section of red brick, and the top section is a colonnaded viewing gallery built of artificial stone, and topped by a pyramidal copper roof. They were modelled on the campanile of St. Mark's Basilica in Venice.They were originally envisaged in Léon Jaussely's city expansion plan of 1907, and designed by architect Ramon Reventós and built in the period 1927 to 1929, as part of the redevelopment of the area for the 1929 Barcelona International Exposition. Reventós was also involved in a number of other projects featured in the exhibition, such as the Greek Theatre (Teatre Grec), the Spanish Village (Poble Espanyol), and the buildings of the Montjuïc Funicular on the nearby hill of Montjuïc. They serve an ornamental function, to mark the entrance to the exhibition district, now known as Fira de Barcelona, and the start of the grand avenue leading up to the Palau Nacional on Montjuïc, which houses the National Art Museum of Catalonia. Originally, the towers were open to the public, who could climb the internal stairs to the viewing galleries, but they are now normally closed. In later years, the western tower housed equipment for controlling the illumination of the Magic Fountain of Montjuïc, 350m away at the far end of Avinguda Maria Cristina, and the gallery of the eastern tower housed sirens for signalling possible emergencies; the disused equipment was removed during the 2013/14 restoration work.The towers are registered as protected structures by Barcelona city council, with a protection level of B:B, a structure of local interest.Following restoration work, the towers opened to the public for the first time since 1929, for a two-day period during October 2014.