Dali's Surrealist Costa Brava
One of the most interesting activities to do while staying, out of season, in Mas Saline is to discover Dali's heritage in his beloved Costa Brava.
The journey starts in the fisherman's village of Cadaqués in glorious solitude. This fragment of north-east Spain remains just as alluring as ever – a real work of art, or more accurately, artists. Picasso's old house is that blue one on the corner where the coastline makes another crinkle in Cadaqués' shoreline. And if you clamber beyond it and over the headland, you find the fantastic palace that belonged to the mustachioed maestro.
In 1930, Salvador Dalà was already a surreal success when he came to Cadaqués – or specifically to the little cove of Port Lligat, a mile to the north. He could afford to indulge, and indulge he did. The man who mangled reality turned a sequence of fishermen's cottages tottering down a hillside into a labyrinthine home and studio that almost gets its feet wet.
From Cadaques, on the road again to DalÃ's finest masterpiece in Figueres, where Dalà decided to create an indelible print of his life and work. He wanted "the most extravagant and solid examples of my art" to be housed in his home town. Not in a mere gallery, but a Theatre-Museum, claimed to be "the largest surrealistic object in the world".
From Figueres, Dali's triangle will be completed by visiting the romantic and small medieval village of Púbol, where Dali bought a medieval castle as a gift for his beloved wife and muse Gala.