Casa Natal Salvador Dalí: Birthplace in Figueres

A Modernist Home on Carrer Monturiol

Salvador Dalí i Domènech was born on 11 May 1904 at 8:45 a.m. in a three-story Modernist building in central Figueres, Catalonia, Spain. Commissioned in 1898 by Dolors de Puig, Marchioness of La Torre, and designed by municipal architect Josep Azemar i Pont, the residence was completed in 1900. It features three facades facing Carrer Monturiol, Carrer Caamaño, and the former Marchioness's garden, topped by a rooftop terrace.

The official Casa Natal Salvador Dalí museum lists its address as Carrer Monturiol, 6, with a secondary entrance at Carrer Caamaño, 5, though several historical and reference sources list number 20 due to later street renumbering. Situated between Plaça de la Palmera and the lower end of La Rambla, the building stands on land originally urbanized by liberal lawyer Tomàs Puig before passing to his granddaughter, the Marchioness of La Torre.

Dalí's Childhood and Family Life

Born in Cadaqués, Dalí's father, Salvador Dalí i Cusí, studied law in Barcelona, passed the notary exams, and settled in Figueres in 1900 through his friendship with Pepito Pichot. That same year, he opened a notary practice on the ground floor, married Felipa Domènech Ferrés, and moved with her into the mezzanine apartment. The family lived there until the summer of 1912, when they relocated down the street to Carrer Monturiol, 24 (now number 10), overlooking Plaça de la Palmera.

Nine months before Salvador's birth, on 1 August 1903, his older brother—also named Salvador, born on 12 October 1901—died of gastroenteritis. Taken to the grave as a child and told he was his brother's reincarnation, Dalí later wrote that they resembled each other "like two drops of water, but we had different reflections," calling his sibling "the first version of myself but conceived too much in the absolute." Within the household, his strict, anti-clerical, Catalan-federalist father drew leading figures of Figueres to the notary office, while his devoutly Catholic mother encouraged young Salvador's artistic pursuits. His younger sister, Anna Maria, was also born in the apartment.

Daily life inside the house left lasting impressions on the future artist. A broad balcony-gallery connecting Carrer Monturiol and Carrer Caamaño held scented potted tuberose and lilies, a gazebo-like structure, and an aviary where his mother raised canaries and pigeons. Forbidden by his parents from entering the family kitchen—which remains nearly intact—young Dalí spent hours spying on the women working inside, declaring at age six that he wanted to be a cook and at seven that he wanted to be Napoleon. Food later became a recurring motif in his surrealist works.

The Street of Geniuses

Renamed Carrer Monturiol in 1891 in honor of submarine inventor Narcís Monturiol, the street holds an unusual place in Catalan cultural history. Within a stretch of barely 200 meters, Carrer Monturiol was the birthplace of three celebrated Figueres figures: Narcís Monturiol, poet Carles Fages de Climent, and Salvador Dalí. Fages de Climent commemorated the coincidence in a well-known epigram, and historians link this concentration of notable figures to the street's 19th-century expansion outside the town walls.

Preservation and the Biographical Museum

Efforts to preserve Dalí's birthplace spanned nearly 30 years and six mayoral terms. Figueres City Council acquired the ground floor and part of the mezzanine in 1995 and purchased the remainder of the building in 2001. Restoration began in September 2019—supported by the European Union, the Spanish state, Girona Provincial Council, and Figueres City Council, including a 2.5 million euro first phase—culminating in the opening of Casa Natal Salvador Dalí in October 2023.

Unlike a conventional art gallery, the museum holds no permanent Dalí paintings of its own, focusing instead on Dalí's childhood, family environment, and multifaceted persona alongside temporary Guest Artworks loans. A one-way, roughly one-hour circuit spans all three floors, taking visitors through the restored notary office, the birth room, the family kitchen, and the terrace. Exhibitions combine holograms, talking windows, projection mappings, giant kaleidoscopes, more than 400 images, and an audio guide in Catalan, Spanish, English, and French structured as a dialogue between Dalí's words and a narrator.

Visiting Information and Nearby Landmarks

Casa Natal Salvador Dalí operates with timed entry every 10 minutes for groups of up to eight people, capped at 432 visitors per day. It opens from 10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. (last entry at 6:00 p.m.) daily from June to September and Tuesday to Sunday from October to May, closing on Mondays (except holidays and holiday eves), 25 December, and 1 January, with reduced hours on 24 December, 31 December, and 5 January. General admission is 15 euros, with a 9 euro reduced rate that applies to Dalí Theatre-Museum ticket holders; the building provides reduced-mobility access and induction loops.

The house is under a 10-minute walk from the conventional Figueres train station and roughly 25 minutes on foot from the Figueres-Vilafant high-speed AVE station. In central Figueres, it sits about a five-minute walk from the Dalí Theatre-Museum—built on the former Municipal Theatre where Dalí held his first public exhibition and where he is buried beneath the geodesic dome—as well as the Gothic Church of Sant Pere (site of his baptism, First Communion, and funeral), the Museu de l'Empordà (home to his permanent painting Saint Narcís), and the Toy Museum of Catalonia, which preserves his childhood teddy bear, Don Osito Marquina.