'La Diada', National Day of Catalonia: Open Doors

With exhibits spanning from the Lower Paleolithic era right up to Jordi Pujol's proclamation as President of the Generalitat in 1980, the Catalan History Museum offers a virtual chronology of the region's past. Visit the museum for free from 10am to 2.30pm on September 11.

The time frame for this archaeology collection starts with the Palaeolithic period, and there are relics of Greek, Punic, Roman and Visigothic colonisers, up to the early Middle Ages. Doors are open on La Diada from 10am to 2.30pm.

'One museum, a thousand years of art' is the slogan of the National Museum, and the collection provides a dizzying overview of Catalan art from the 12th to the 20th centuries. Take it all in for free from 10am to 3pm on Tuesday.

Stretching from the Plaça del Rei to the cathedral are some 4,000sq m (43,000sq ft) of subterranean Roman excavations – streets, villas and storage vats for oil and wine, all discovered by accident in the late 1920s when a whole swath of the Gothic Quarter was dug up to make way for the central avenue of Via Laietana. Explore as much as you can all day during La Diada, from 10am to 7pm.