After the Museu Picasso, the most visited museum in the city is the Museu FC Barcelona (www.fcbarcelona.cat), the museum of the city's revered football (soccer) team, Barça. It's inside their home ground, Camp Nou, the largest stadium in Europe, with a capacity of 120,000 and built in 1997. Despite its size, tickets to matches are as scarce as hens' teeth. Most of the seats are taken by socis (members) of the richest soccer club in the world. As their slogan goes, Barça is mes que un club ("More than a club"). Membership is handed down through the generations and is a mark of Catalanismo (Catalan identity). During the Franco dictatorship, the war was played out on the soccer field, with Madrid's team seen as representative of the hated central government. Madrid is still Barça's arch-enemy (old grudges die hard in soccer) and when the two meet at Camp Nou, the whole city stops.
Along with the museum, you can choose to see the (empty) stadium, the chapel where players say a prayer before a big match, the club and pressrooms, and the tunnel leading onto the field. The collection consists of photos, trophies, documents, kit, and other paraphernalia telling the emotive history of the club from its beginnings in 1899 to the present. It makes for some light relief from other heady cultural offerings.
Planned work by Sir Norman Foster is on hold at the time of writing for financial reasons, although it's hoped his radical plans for giving the stadium a facelift will get the go-ahead by 2012.
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