Contemporary Art Galleries in Girona: A Short Guide

Most people arrive in Girona for the medieval city. The cathedral steps, the Jewish quarter, the coloured houses hanging over the Onyar. Almost nobody arrives for the contemporary art, and the guidebooks do nothing to change that.

There is a reason for the silence, and it is worth stating plainly. In the 1980s and 1990s this city supported around a dozen commercial galleries. By 2016 that had collapsed to almost nothing, and the work of showing contemporary art passed largely to public institutions and private foundations. What you are looking at now is a rebuild, and it is recent enough that a guide written five years ago would have been a different and much shorter document.

That is what makes it interesting. Almost everything listed here sits inside a twenty minute walk, and most of the people who chose the work are standing in the room. This is not Barcelona and it does not pretend to be. What it offers instead is access.

We run one of the spaces below, so treat our own entry with the scepticism it deserves and trust the rest.

Free or low cost, none of them selling work, all of them worth the detour.

Girona's public contemporary art centre, running since 2008. It works across research, production and exhibition, with residencies, publications, a documentation service and education programmes, and forms part of the Xarxa de Centres d'Art de Catalunya. It operates three separate venues: the main space at Plaça del Pou Rodó 7-9, Bòlit_LaRambla in the Sala Fidel Aguilar at Rambla de la Llibertat 1, and Bòlit_StNicolau at Plaça de Santa Llúcia 1.

This is the most ambitious programming in the city and the most demanding of its audience. Expect installation, video and research-led projects rather than paintings on walls. The Sant Nicolau chapel is worth entering for the Romanesque building alone, whatever is inside it. Opening hours are limited and differ between venues, so check the current programme before crossing town.

Housed in the Fontana d'Or, a twelfth century merchant house at Carrer dels Ciutadans 19. This is the city's most reliably professional exhibition programme, with a rotating schedule of photography, design, comics and historical surveys. The building alone justifies the visit. Open seven days a week including Monday, which makes it the answer to the perennial problem of arriving somewhere on the day everything closes.

Pujada de la Catedral 12, directly beside the cathedral. Be clear about what this is: the permanent collection runs from Romanesque and Gothic through to the early twentieth century, and on that ground it is genuinely excellent. Romanesque capitals, sixteenth century altarpieces, the Sant Feliu retable. The contemporary element arrives through the temporary exhibition programme and through holdings that are not permanently on display. Go for the medieval work and let the contemporary show be a bonus. Closed Mondays.

Carrer de la Força 27, in the heart of the Call. The permanent displays cover the city's history, and the building itself is worth the ticket, since it occupies an eighteenth century Capuchin monastery with a surviving 1753 wine cellar and cistern. The annexed exhibition space runs a regular programme of temporary shows that frequently includes contemporary work. Worth checking what is on before you write it off as a history museum.

Plaça de l'Hospital 6. Built around the work and thought of Domènec Fita, one of the defining figures of twentieth century art in this city, with a wider brief to promote contemporary practice. Small, serious and almost entirely undiscovered by visitors.

Gran Via de Jaume I 42, outside the old town in the Eixample. Exhibitions by artists from the Girona region, alongside book launches and concerts. Locals rate it more highly than visitors ever find out. Afternoon opening only on weekdays, which catches people out.

Plaça de l'Hospital 6, sharing a building with the Fundació Fita. Provincial exhibition halls with a rotating programme and free entry. Worth a look if you are passing.

Where the work is for sale, or at least where the programming is not municipal. In a city this size the number is small, which means each space has a genuine character rather than a house style borrowed from elsewhere.

Carrer de Santa Eugènia 5, principal 1a. The most conceptually ambitious space in the city and the least likely to be found by accident, since it sits on a first floor outside the old town. Opened in May 2024, it prioritises artists working on postcolonial realities and identity politics, on political economies read through an anthropogenic lens, and on the blurring of natural and artificial in post-digital conditions, connecting what happens in the gallery to the surrounding vernacular of history, architecture, food, landscape and craft.

If you follow contemporary art seriously, this is the space in Girona you did not know existed. Contact ahead of visiting.

Carrer Nou 8. The city's established gallery, family run, with a deep back catalogue held on site well beyond what hangs on the walls. Catalan painting and sculpture across several generations. If you want to understand what has actually been collected in this region over decades rather than what is fashionable now, start here. Closed Sunday and Monday.

Carrer de la Força 19, on the main street through the Call. It opened with an explicit purpose: to show the work of Girona artists, and to cover a gap that was as much social as artistic, giving makers and public somewhere to meet. It is the project of three local founders, Josep Capdeferro, Carme Simon and Miquel Pujadas, working in a small space and programming mid-format shows that usually pair two or three artists whose work connects thematically, across painting, drawing, sculpture and photography.

Plaça dels Lledoners 1, immediately behind the Museu d'Art. This is us, so read on accordingly. We opened in March 2025 on a single premise: to show living artists from the Catalan-speaking territories, mostly working abstractly, at prices a person with a job can actually pay. Most of what hangs here sits between 50 - 3000 €, and we will tell you the price without you having to ask, which is not universal in this business. Open Tuesday to Saturday.

The passage on Carrer de les Hortes, in the window of Llibreria 22. A shop window converted into a gallery, an initiative of the Ad'Art association that began in late 2013 and has since shown more than 108 artists, from painting to sound art, deliberately mixing artists from Girona and Catalonia with others from Spain and beyond. Exhibitions ran monthly until 2023 and are now bimonthly, and the project is co-produced with Bòlit.

The best thing about it is that it never closes. It is a window, so it works at midnight, on a Monday, in the rain. Look for it on your way past and you will have seen an exhibition without meaning to.

Plaça de l'Assumpció 25. A cultural and craft centre bringing together local makers to exhibit and sell, with a strong showing of textile work and mixed media. Weekday opening, morning and evening, closed at weekends.

Go this year. La Volta closes at the end of 2026, which makes 2026 the last chance to see what it has been doing.

If you have half a day, this works and it never doubles back.

East bank, the old town. Start at Bòlit_LaRambla on Rambla de la Llibertat, where you are probably already standing. Up Carrer dels Ciutadans to CaixaForum in the Fontana d'Or. Into Carrer de la Força through the Call, past Mosaic Art at number 19 and the Museu d'Història at 27, then climb to the cathedral. The Museu d'Art is at the top of the steps and we are thirty seconds beyond it in the small square behind. Down past Sant Feliu towards Sant Pere de Galligants for Bòlit_StNicolau and the Pou Rodó space.

West bank. Cross the river at the Eiffel bridge. El Claustre on Carrer Nou, (A)parador22 in the Hortes passage, La Volta on Plaça de l'Assumpció, and if you are still going, the Fundació Fita and Casa de Cultura on Plaça de l'Hospital.

That is nine or ten spaces in roughly four hours, allowing for stopping.

Mondays are difficult. Most of the city's art spaces close on Monday and several close on Sunday too. CaixaForum is the reliable exception, and (A)parador22 is a window, so it is open by definition. If Monday is your only day, plan around those two.

Some of the best spaces open only in the afternoon. Mosaic Art runs 5pm to 8pm, Wednesday to Saturday, and the Fundació Valvi is afternoon-only on weekdays. A morning walk through the old town will miss both. If the galleries matter more to you than the cathedral, invert the usual tourist day.

The long lunch is real. Galleries here typically close between roughly 1.30pm and 4.30pm. This is not a quirk to be worked around, it is the shape of the day. Use it for lunch.

May is the exception to everything. During Temps de Flors, in the second week of May, the entire old town becomes an exhibition and courtyards that stay private for fifty-one weeks of the year open to the public. Galleries programme specifically for it. If you can choose when to come, choose then.

Espai Barri Vell is a contemporary art gallery at Plaça dels Lledoners 1, beside the Museu d'Art in Girona's old town. We show living artists from the Catalan-speaking territories and we are open Tuesday to Saturday. Come in and ask us anything, including the prices.