Tossa de Mar & Salvador Dali's Museum

February 5^th, 2026

Heading north from Barcelona, I decided to stop in small, cute seaside town called Tossa de Mar.  Amazingly, settlements in the area date back to between the 4^th and 1^st century BC!  I went there because I saw a few nice online pics of a castle on a hill by the beach.

Checking out the empty beach.

This is what the place looks like in the summer...look at how busy the beach is!

Versus this...

Flying the Catalan flag.

There were a couple of cannons that were capable of shooting cannonballs 400 meters.

But they were in the sea for many, many years...look at the pitting on it from the seawater.

The remnants of the church on the hill.

A rugged, but beautiful seaside.

This would be a nice place for a drink on a hot, sunny day.  One couple in the corner there didn't care about the weather, they were having a drink anyways.

Back down from the hil, this is another entrance into the walled area of the fortification.

A stereotypical street of Tossa de Mar.

After an hour wandering around town, I hopped back in Octi.  Originally, my plan had been to visit the city of Girona which boasts one of Europe’s oldest Jewish Quarters, but I also wanted to finish the day in Figueres, the home town of Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dalí and I was running out of time.  I decided to skip Girona and head straight to the museum.

This is a roundabout with giant wine bottle corks...I was passing through wine country.  This was as good of a photo as I could snap and there was no where to stop.

The Dalí Theatre & Museum was converted from a building that was the town’s theatre when Dalí was a child.  The old theatre was burned during the Spanish Civil War and remained in a state of ruin. In 1960, Dalí and the mayor of Figueres decided to rebuild it as a museum dedicated to the town's most famous son.

A courtyard with some of Dalí's sculptures.

I guess it's a good use of old tires...

The dome in the background is a central piece of the museum that was added to the theatre building for the museum.

The main entrance.

Inside the central courtyard inside the museum.  There were a bunch of schoolkids on a field trip.

Every golden mannequin's arms were in a different position.

Checking out the semi-circular inner courtyard.

Now inside, looking out.

The dome above the large enclosed area.

Salvador Dali wished to be buried in his museum, that is his crypt on the floor.  This is looking in the opposite direction from the open semi-circular courtyard, inside the building.  That painting is about three storeys tall.

Looking to the right.

Looking to the left of the photo with the big topless man, you can still see his crypt.

There were a bunch of bizarre drawings on the inside curved wall that went around the courtyard.

I do like his signature for his artwork.

He definitely had something for eggs.

I would have that lamp in my house!

He was a character for sure, with his trademark long, thin, curly moustache.

On to some of his paintings.

And some just general weirdness.

How strange a human looks with just an exchange of the ear and the nose.  Oddly, just a few days ago I was looking at people's noses and thinking how odd they can look, but without one, the person would look even more strange.

Speaking of noses, here's a big one with campfire logs in the nostrils.  On the left is the hair.  You walked up some steps and looked through a plastic lens and saw...

...this!

If you thought the face in the previous photo was weird...this one has a naked, headless doll for a nose!

These were pieces by another artist that were on display.

Looking down to the main floor.

Got a different view of the car in the outside courtyard from the second level.

This is a crazy ceiling mural that Dalí painted.  I've seen many frescoes in cathedrals, churches, basilicas etc. on thsi trip, but this was one of the most interesting ones.

This room, and its small side rooms, had an interesting collection of his artwork pieces.

A bedroom off of the main room.  I like the bed with the strange "eel legs" and the ape skeleton lamp.

A copy of one of his most famous works, The Persistence of Memory.  I had a print of this on my wall in my apartment in Victoria for years.

This lovely piece of furniture was in the room opposite the bed.

Another perspective of the fresco in the main room.

This "robot", lying in a crypt, is made from circuit boards, as you'll see better in the next photo.

Salvador Dalí considered this to be one of his masterpieces, The Madonna of Port Lligat.  It condenses a vision of the world in which surrealism, religion, science and Renaissance classicism converge, and all in the service of a new vision, more centred on mysticism and metaphysics.  At least that's what I see...how about you?!?

After the museum, I found a camp spot in a nearby town and called it a day.  Tomorrow I plan to drive to a new country for me…Andorra!