Dalí Theatre and Museum

Listen first. On the square outside, footsteps echo off old stone, and somewhere a café cup clinks against a saucer. Then you look up. A dark red wall rises in front of you, covered in rows of small golden lumps. Along the roofline, giant white eggs stand on their ends against the Catalan sky. This is not a museum that waits quietly for you. It starts talking before you reach the door.

Welcome to the Dalí Theatre and Museum in Figueres. Salvador Dalí was born in this town in 1904. He spent much of his life in Paris, New York and the fishing village of Portlligat on the coast. But he came back here to build the one project he would never stop working on. He liked to describe it as the largest surrealist object in the world. Standing here, it is hard to argue with him.

Those golden lumps on the wall deserve a closer look. They are not stars or ornaments. They are bread. More precisely, they are models of a small three-cornered loaf that people in this part of Catalonia know well. Dalí was fascinated by bread all his life. It appears again and again in his paintings. Here, he turned an everyday breakfast roll into decoration for an entire building. It is a joke, and it is also completely serious.

Now the history. This building began life as the Municipal Theatre of Figueres, built in the nineteenth century. As a boy, Dalí knew it well. In fact, some of his earliest work was shown in this town while he was still a teenager. At the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939, a fire destroyed the theatre. For decades, it stood as a burnt-out shell in the middle of town. Dalí saw that ruin and saw an opportunity.

He persuaded the town and the authorities to let him rebuild it as a museum of his own work. The project took years. The museum finally opened in 1974. Dalí did not just hang paintings on walls. He designed rooms, staircases, ceilings and courtyards as artworks in themselves. The whole building is meant to be one piece. You are not walking past exhibits. You are walking through a single, very strange idea.

Above the old stage, look for the great glass dome. It is a geodesic structure, built from a lattice of transparent panels, and it has become the symbol of the town. On a sunny day, light falls through it in a soft grid onto the space below. The dome was designed by the Spanish architect Emilio Pérez Piñero. From the streets of Figueres, you can see it shining above the rooftops like a giant crystal bubble.

Here is the first thing many visitors miss. Beneath that stage, under the floor, lies Dalí himself. He died in Figueres in 1989, and he was buried in a crypt inside his own museum. There is no grand mausoleum. There is a simple stone slab. The man who loved spectacle chose to rest in the middle of it, while thousands of strangers walk above him every day. Many people find it surprisingly moving.

In the open courtyard, under the sky where the theatre audience once sat, you will find one of the most famous works here — the Rainy Taxi. It is a real black Cadillac. Inside, mannequins sit among plants, and when the mechanism runs, water falls inside the car, not outside. Above it rises a tall column made of stacked tyres. At the very top sits a small boat that belonged to Gala, Dalí's wife and lifelong muse.

Now find the Mae West Room. From most angles, it looks like an odd collection of furniture. There is a pair of curtains, two framed pictures on the wall, a fireplace, and a red sofa shaped like lips. Then you climb a few steps and look through a lens. Suddenly everything comes together into the face of the American film star Mae West. The sofa becomes her mouth. The curtains become her hair. It is a perfect lesson in how Dalí wanted us to see.

The second surprise waits in a painting of Gala, seen from behind, looking out of a window towards the Mediterranean Sea. Up close, it is built from small squares, almost like a mosaic. Walk far back across the room, or look at it through a camera screen, and the image changes. A portrait of Abraham Lincoln appears. Dalí loved these double images. One picture holds two pictures, and your distance decides which one you see.

Upstairs, look up again. In one of the main rooms, the ceiling is painted with two enormous figures seen from below, as if they are rising into the clouds. You see the soles of their feet first. They are Dalí and Gala, floating towards heaven, with gold coins falling from their bodies. The room is known as the Palace of the Wind. It is grand, a little absurd and, like much of this place, quite affectionate.

The building next door is part of the story too. The tall tower attached to the museum is called the Galatea Tower, named in honour of Gala. After her death, Dalí lived here during his final years, close to his creation. Across the square stands the Church of Saint Peter, where he was baptised as a child. In a few steps, you move from the start of his life to its end, all within one small corner of town.

As you leave, stand on the square for a moment and look back. The eggs are still balanced on the roof. The bread is still stuck to the walls. Figueres carries on around you, with shoppers, schoolchildren and the smell of coffee from the cafés. Dalí wanted this building to unsettle people and to delight them at the same time. Take a last look at the glass dome catching the light. Then walk on, and notice how ordinary the street suddenly feels.