History and description:

Santiago Rusiñol was enthusiastical by Sitges from 1881 when he known the village probably in occasion of a travel to Vilanova (an important town near Sitges).
Rusiñol captivated by the village decided to translate there his artistic collections from Barcelona.
To lodge that collection, Rusiñol bought two fisherman houses - can Sense and can Falua - and he built the Cau Ferrat linking the two old houses and unifying the façade in a neo gothic style. The architect Francesc Rogent i Pedrosa made between 1893 and 1894 substantial changes on the previous buildings, using the windows of the old gothic castle of Sitges altered some years earlier when the present town hall was built.
The ground floor was the residence of the painter and has four different rooms decorated with pictures of Rusiñol himself, Ramón Casas, Ignacio Zuloaga, Pichot and others, sculptures of Manolo Hugué and G. Violet. On the desk of Rusiñol, it is some artworks of artists like E. Clarasó, R. Casas, I Zuloaga and Picasso. In the room in front of sea it is a nice waterspout who brings a special character to the room. All the ground floor is also decorated with interesting ceramic units.
The first floor is a fantastic large room with a fancy wood roof, where the Cau Ferrat Museum shows a big variety of artworks like a forged iron objects collection, two paintings by El Greco, a Saint Peter and a Mary Magdalena, other paintings by Rusiñol, Zuloaga, Casas, Clarasó, etc., a splendid collection of glass bottles, cups, pitchers, bowls and objects bought by Rusiñol to Alexandre de Riquer; keys, chandeliers and other artistic objects.
The Cau Ferrat was the seat of literary competitions during the Festes Modernistes (Art Nouveau festivals) between 1892 and 1899.

The Museum

Downstairs

Hall*	Dining room and kitchen*	Santiago Rusiñol's studio*
The waterspout room*	Bedroom

Upstairs (Gothic hall)

Gothic hall to the street side*	Gothic hall to the sea side*	Ceiling*

The El Greco paintings of Cau Ferrat collection

This two splendid El Greco (Domenikos Theotocopoulos) paintings are "The tears of Saint Peter" and "Mary Magdalene repentant". Santiago Rusiñol bough that pictures from Pau Bosch in Paris to be made known to a wider public. The Third Modernista Festival in November 1894 was the opportunity to show that works. Rusiñol organized the arrival of the two paintings of El Greco in procession to Sitges. Today both paintings are exposed in the Gothic Hall of "Cau Ferrat Museum" **

Some iron forged pieces of Santiago Rusiñol (Cau Ferrat) collection

*

The Cau Ferrat was in its origins (and remain to be) a collection of iron forged pieces - including a large range of different objects as chandeliers, patches, locks, keys, ornaments, and a variety of other elements from middle and modern age -  bought by Santiago Rusiñol to assure its conservation. The collection includes also a big found of glass pieces as bottles, cups, pitchers, bowls and objects bought by Rusiñol to Alexandre de Riquer. The extraordinary hard work developed by Rusiñol give us at present the possibility to have an in deep knowledge of objects of common use in that historical periods.

The photography's signaled with a * are granted by the Consorci del Patrimoni de Sitges  UP Previous Next Home