Art and culture in Barcelona for every budget

Whether you come to visit the city or you have lived here all your life, in this blog we will recommend a variety of events and cultural activities that are practically free. Money will no longer be an excuse to take into account Barcelona’s great cultural offer in our plans.

Free visits

In Barcelona there are history museums, of contemporary art, of science and even a Museum of Illusions, a space designed for the visitor to play and experiment with optical illusions.

Although the entrance fee to the latter is around 10€, there are dozens of museums that can be visited for free on selected days of the week or month, or even that are completely free every day of the year.

There is no excuse, any Sunday of the month you can visit cultural centers that offer a variety of exhibitions, activities and talks, such as the Center for Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB).

With more than 4000 m² of exhibition rooms, an auditorium, a bookstore, several rooms with multipurpose applications, we can find from photography exhibitions such as the well-known World Press Photo, to different types of activities, documentary screenings, informative talks and even festivals of series and music. 

If we want to visit the MACBA we have to know that the museum of contemporary art  does not open free on Sundays, but every Saturday from 16 to 20 h and we can buy free tickets up to 30 minutes before closing.

The Barcelona Design Museum (DHUB), for its part, is a space open to the public every day of the year (except Mondays) that contains a large exhibition hall, library service, a café and even an auditorium for events. If we look at its website, we will also find free activities for children and adults. 

For more information, Barcelona City Hall’s website (website in Catalan and Spanish only) offers a list of all the museums that can be accessed for free on Sundays from 3 p.m. in the afternoon.

In order to be able to take advantage of and visit the other museums in the city, on the first Sunday of the month and on the international museum day, we can have free access to many others museums, such as the Museum of Art of Catalonia (MNAC), the Museum of History of Barcelona (MUHBA), or the Picasso Museum. 

It is also good to know that in addition to its permanent exhibitions, some museums offer film cycles, activities, talks and conferences at very reduced prices, which do not exceed 6€ (some are even free!), as would be the case of CosmoCaixa and Caixa Fórum. 

Although it is not a museum, it is also interesting to know that La Casa de la Ciutat de Barcelona, the building and headquarters of Barcelona City Hall, opens its doors to visitors every Sunday from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and offers guided tours to learn about the history and architecture of this emblematic building dating from the 14th century.

Art galleries

If you like visual arts and discovering new artists, we invite you to take a stroll through Barcelona’s Eixample district. Concentrated in this area you can find a large number of prestigious art galleries that open their doors for free, such as the well-known Marlborough Barcelona Gallery, sister of the London gallery founded in 1946 by Frank Lloyd and Harry Fisher, or also the popular Joan Gaspar Gallery, known for having promoted painters such as Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, or Antoni Tàpies. 

If you’re lucky and you’re in Barcelona around this time, you can take the opportunity to attend the Young Gallery Weekend for free, it’s a contemporary art festival organized by galleries, creative spaces, new artists and independent cultural projects, which celebrates its 5th edition in 2019. This is a good proposal to connect with the latest avant-garde artists and discover new local talents.

If, on the other hand, you do not coincide with this event that we recommend, maybe you can come across some interesting inauguration where you will be served a snack or a free beer.

At PCG we believe quality plans don’t always have to be expensive. That’s why we hope you find these brief recommendations useful while deciding what to do or what to visit in Barcelona, a city that has a lot to offer.