World-renown artists such as Pablo Picasso, the architect Antoni Gaudí, the surrealist Salvador Dalí, and the painter and sculptor Joan Miró all drew on the region's liberating charm to produce some of the most vanguard art of their times. The latter three were all natives of the region, while Picasso first came to Barcelona at age 14 and later returned there from Paris to begin his famous "Blue Period."

Ultimately, this quartet left behind in the region dozens of museums and landmark sites that together offer a most pleasing game of Cultural Connect the Dots. To play this game, travelers should start chronologically in Barcelona with a tour of the many masterworks of Antoni Gaudí (1852-1926).

That's/gow-dee/not "gawdy"

Gaudí is the least well-known of this quartet because he limited his life's output to the Catalonia province. This didn't keep him from earning a giant reputation within the art world, and his visually fanciful architecture is a high point of any visit to Barcelona. Part industrial-age engineer, old-world craftsman and mystic hermit, Gaudí was devoutly modern in his embrace of the Art Nouveau movement of the late 19th century while remaining staunchly anachronistic in his overtly religious and naturalistic motifs. Or to put it as Time art critic Robert Hughes has, Gaudí "wanted to find radically new ways of being radically old."

The supreme example of this is his great unfinished masterpiece, La Sagrada Familia (the Church of the Holy Family), which is also the official symbol of Barcelona. Gaudí conceived it to have 16 soaring towers with a central one soaring nearly 530 feet high.Of the church's three ornate facades, he completed only one before his 1926 death. Despite this and the destruction of his blueprints during the Spanish Civil War, work on the ambitious project continues today by another architect who is following the spirit of Gaudí's design but with his own stylistic stamp. Visitors can tour the construction site, climb the towers, and compare and contrast the two styles. Admission is $5.

But the Sagrada Familia is hardly the only Gaudí masterwork in Barcelona. Thirteen other Gaudí works dot the metro area. Preeminent are the public-friendly flights of fancy in Park Güell and the wondrous facades, interiors and rooflines of the Palau Güell, Casa Batllo and Casa Milá. Gaudí-philes can also enjoy a four-course dinner at the Casa Calvet restaurant located within a 103-year-old Gaudí-designed private apartment building of the same name. The city makes touring Gaudí sites easy with its city tourism bus. The two bus routes make a figure eight through Barcelona, making 27 different stops that include all of the popular Gaudí sites and other popular Barcelona attractions and neighborhoods. Daylong tickets for unlimited hop-on/hop-off rides cost $14. Ticket holders are also eligible for discount prices at many museums, fast food restaurants and other attractions.

The sophisticated 211-room AC Diplomatic is located just a block off the trendy boulevard most closely associated with Gaudí: the Passeig de Gracia, on which two of his best buildings are located (the Casa Batllo and Casa Milá). The hotel is a 30-minute, $22 taxi ride from the airport. 2003 rates are $240 for a standard; $275, superior; and $300, junior suite.

Young Pablo

Although Gaudí dominates Barcelona, the city's most visited attraction belongs to Picasso. The Picasso Museum located in the old Ribera neighborhood at No. 15-19 Carrer de Montcada. (For those of travelers connecting the dots, the museum is located a pleasant 15-minute walk northeast across the old Gothic Quarter from Gaudí's Palau Güell.)

Housing one of the largest collections of Picasso's work, the three-floor museum pays fitting tribute to the role Barcelona played in the early art education of Picasso (1881-1973) while also tracing the artist's lifelong exploration of new styles of artistic expression. The highlights of the collection are the numerous pieces from Picasso's Blue Period and his Las Meninas series, a technical study of Velasquez's 17th-century masterpiece of the same name. Admission is $4.50.

For Pablo-philes, it should be noted that after Picasso returned from his first visit to Paris he lived for a time at No. 10 Carrer de la Rambla across the street from Gaudí's Palau Güell. Here Picasso also lived next door to Carlota Valdiva, whom he immortalized in his Blue Period painting "La Celestina." Within the adjacent Gothic Quarter, devotees can also have drink or meal at Els Quartre Gats at 3 Carrer de Montsio, the famous turn-of-the-century hangout frequented by Picasso and fellow artists.

Mount Miro

Just as Picasso came in the footsteps of Gaudí, the Catalan artist and sculptor Miró (1893-1983) followed Picasso. Miró grew up in the city's old Gothic Quarter. Like Picasso, he was not content to remain in Spain his whole life and enjoyed an international reputation. But throughout his life he returned to his roots for inspiration and ultimately chose his hometown to locate his foundation and museum, the Joan Miró Foundation.

The 25-year-old museum contains a large, interesting collection of his colorful paintings and smaller sculptures, and the foundation serves as a center for the continuing promotion of avant-garde art. Located atop Montjuic, the museum also dramatically overlooks Barcelona and has its own stop on the city tourism bus. Admission is $7.50.

But the works that Miró is generally most known for are too monumental to be displayed in most museums. These are his modern totemic sculptures that grace public spaces around the world, and Barcelona fittingly boasts one of his largest. By marching down the northern slope from the foundation, visitors can connect a couple more dots by visiting the aptly named Parc Joan Miró that is dominated by the 70-feet-tall Dona i Ocell (Woman and Bird).

The five-star, 482-room Hotel Arts Barcelona, a seafront Ritz-Carlton property, offers lovely views, beach access, and proximity to many hip restaurants, shops, and clubs. 2002 rates range from $320 for a deluxe in low season to $1,600 for the presidential suite. It is also a 30-minute ride from the airport.

Dalí-wood

The last dots to connect on this cultural map take visitors for a very pleasing tour north through the Costa Brava. The area takes its name from the mountains that plunge into the sea and create bold, rugged vistas. Of Spain's three primary coastal regions-along with the Costa Blanca and Costa del Sol-the Costa Brava is the least developed and most wild, which accounts for its popularity among artists.

The most famous of these artists was the great avant-garde surrealist Salvador Dalí (1904-1989) born in the village of Figueres. As one of the first pop art celebrities of the media age, few artists courted and used his fame more theatrically than Dalí. Although he enjoyed international fame-especially in the U.S.-he felt an intractable tie to his native Catalonia, and the influence was decidedly two-way with the Costa Brava leaving its mark on him and he on it. Artful evidence of this survives today in the form of the trio of sites collectively known as the Dalí Triangle.

In the Theatre-Museum in his Figueres, visitors can admire a variety of surreal, playful, and beautiful works created by Dalí specifically for the space. These include a taxi cab that rains on the inside, a portrait of his wife that morphs bizarrely into one of Abraham Lincoln, and luxurious jewelry of Dalí's own design. Outside the fishing town of Cadaques, his House-Museum in Portlligat offers another embodiment of this beguiling motif. It is a beautiful maze of whitewashed living and studio space personalized and all imprinted with his indelible style.

Lastly, Dalí bought the Castle of Pubol at La Pera to fulfill his promise to his wife to make her a queen of her own castle. Today the castle houses a collection of Dalí's work and his wife's personal effects and, like all stops throughout the "Costa Bravura," provides a fascinating exploration of the art and artists that Catalonia has produced over the last century and a half.

Along the Costa Brava, JAX FAX stayed at the four-star, 90-room Hotel Carlemany in the Costa Brava town of Girona, located about 12 miles west of the Castle of Pubol. The stylish hotel offered an excellent location within the small city within easy walking distance of Girona's old medieval city. 2003 rates are $95, single; $105, double.