Built between 1905 and 1908 by the architect, Lluís Domènech i Montaner, as a headquarters for the Orfeó Català and funded by popular donations, it constitutes a symbolic and sentimental heritage of an entire city that identifies with its history. In addition, the Concert Hall - one of the most unique ones in the world - has been the privileged stage for the national and international concert life of the city of Barcelona for one hundred years.
Over the last two decades the renewal of Barcelona's Palau de la Música Catalana has been fostered in artistic, structural and heritage terms. In artistic terms, with the renewal of the choir of the Orfeó Català, the creation of the chamber choir of the Palau de la Música Catalana in 1990 and the choir school of the Orfeó Català in 1999. In structural terms, through public-private co-operation to set up the Palau de la Música Catalana consortium in 1993 to take on the management and operation of the concert auditorium and the administration of the Palau de la Música Catalana building, and also through the creation of the Orfeó Català-Palau de la Música foundation in 1990 in order to gather the resources needed to develop the choirs of the Orfeó Català and organise 150 concerts at the Palau de la Música, highlights among these including the Palau 100 cycles and Les Escoles alPalau (Schools at the Palau). In heritage terms, by carrying out work to adapt and extend the Palau under the direction of the architect Oscar Tusquets, completed in 1989, and through the ambitious “Un Palau per al segle XXI”(“A Palau for the 21st century”) project leading to the opening of the Petit Palau auditorium and the Plaça del Palau on 22nd April 2004.
The Palau de la Música Catalana, full of light and of colour, is also today, a cultural asset that is open to the world, whose halls and areas host concerts of all genres and styles, cultural, social and business events, congresses, conferences, exhibitions, etc. This is why it is a point of reference in the cultural and social life of the city of Barcelona.