A Tour Inside Salvador Dalí’s Labyrinthine Spanish Home

Along the Cos­ta Bra­va in north­ern Spain, in the lit­tle sea­side vil­lage of Portl­li­gat, sits the house that became Sal­vador Dalí’s main res­i­dence in 1930. It start­ed off as a small fisherman’s hut. Then Dalí went to work on the struc­ture, ren­o­vat­ing it lit­tle by lit­tle over the next 40 years, cre­at­ing a liv­ing, breath­ing, labyrinthine home that reflects the artist’s one-of-a-kind aes­thet­ic. Writ­ing about the house, the author Joseph Pla once said:

The dec­o­ra­tion of the house is sur­pris­ing, extra­or­di­nary. Per­haps the most exact adjec­tive would be: nev­er-before-seen. I do not believe that there is any­thing like it, in this coun­try or in any oth­er.… Dalí’s house is com­plete­ly unex­pect­ed.… It con­tains noth­ing more than mem­o­ries, obses­sions. The fixed ideas of its own­ers. There is noth­ing tra­di­tion­al, nor inher­it­ed, nor repeat­ed, nor copied here. All is inde­ci­pher­able per­son­al mythol­o­gy.… There are art works (by the painter), Russ­ian things (of Mrs. Gala), stuffed ani­mals, stair­cas­es of geo­log­i­cal walls going up and down, books (strange for such peo­ple), the com­mon­place and the refined, etc.

For many, it’s a long trip to Portl­li­gat, and only eight peo­ple can vis­it the house at a time. So today we’re fea­tur­ing a video tour of Dalí’s Span­ish home. The inte­ri­or shots begin around the 1:30 mark. If you love taxi­dermy, you won’t be wast­ing your time.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Des­ti­no: The Sal­vador Dalí – Dis­ney Col­lab­o­ra­tion 57 Years in the Mak­ing

Sal­vador Dalí Appears on “What’s My Line? in 1952

Alfred Hitch­cock Recalls Work­ing with Sal­vador Dalí on Spell­bound

Un Chien Andalou: Revis­it­ing Buñuel and Dalí’s Sur­re­al­ist Film


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Comments (7)
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  • pep says:

    It’s always inter­est­ing to see how some­one would nev­er refer to Sco­tish peo­ple as ‘British’ or Scot­land as UK, even though they polit­i­cal­ly belong to the king­dom of UK.
    How­ev­er when it comes to the king­dom of Spain, every­one is Span­ish. I’m aware that Cata­lans also polit­i­cal­ly belong to Spain — altough for ter­ri­bly dif­fer­ent rea­sons than Scot­land belongs to UK, ie. a vio­lent inva­sion rather than a peace­ful treaty.
    It is not false that both Dalí and Josep Pla were polit­i­cal­ly Span­ish cit­i­zens, how­ev­er, since both their works were huge con­tri­bu­tions to Cata­lan cul­ture and they both defend­ed that (although some­times not evi­dent and using sym­bol­ism — remem­ber it was dic­ta­tor­ship times), I believe it would be a bit more appropi­ate to both­er to men­tion the word “cata­lan” or “Cat­alo­nia” in the arti­cle, togeth­er with the word “Span­ish” and “Spain”, if you want.
    Just an obser­va­tion, I encounter this not so con­sid­er­ate “prob­lem” pret­ty often.

  • Albert says:

    ‘North­ern Spain’?! Cat­alo­nia!

  • lormatuszewsky says:

    But why is this video so bor­ing? I real­ly want­ed to see what that house looks like, but I almost lost my will to breathe… Videos about inter­est­ing peo­ple should be inter­est­ing too!

  • Tuula Westra says:

    Dali, a fab artist, his works nev­er grow old.

  • Dolents says:

    How cring­ing­ly pathet­ic of some of my fel­low Cata­lans nev­er to miss the chance, how­ev­er tan­gen­tial the issue at hand, to bore and bug the rest of the world with their para­noid parochial whing­ing about toponyms, demonyms and all that pet­ty jazz. Last time the author of this post checked, Port Lli­gat was locat­ed in North­ern Spain. Why should she both­er to men­tion Cat­alo­nia? And Dalí was Span­ish through and through, an unabashed­ly sup­port­er of Fran­co at that.

  • ray n says:

    Turn the new age bs music off. Would much rather hear some­thing from Dal­i’s record col­lec­tion play­ing in the back­ground, or the nat­ur­al sounds in the house. Or noth­ing at all. Why the hell does every last doc­u­men­tary like this not under­stand that music –unless expert­ly chosen–does any­thing oth­er than dis­tract and annoy?

  • k says:

    Fas­ci­nat­ing, beau­ti­ful house. I would make anoth­er trip to it just to have more time to take it all in. There is a dried flower (gold­en brown colour) used through­out the house; either hang­ing from ceil­ng or sit­u­at­ed above, atop a large/tall piece of fur­ni­ture or crevice in the wall. It’s name was men­tioned dur­ing the actu­al tour and I have not remem­bered it. Any idea of it’s name? If ever one might be in the area of Port Lli­gat, make sure you make the time to see Dal­i’s res­i­dence.

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