Room Escape Artist

Josep Fontalda House Museum is one of the best escape rooms near Barcelona. Here are our recommendations for other great escape rooms near Barcelona, Spain.

The element of surprise 🧪

Location: Tona, Spain

Date Played: July 7, 2025

Team Size: 2-6; we recommend 2-4

Duration: 75 minutes

Price:  80-130€ per team

Ticketing: Private

Accessibility Consideration: All players must climb some narrow steps

Mess Meter:  🧹 (out of 5)

Emergency Exit Rating: [A] Push To Exit

Physical Restraints: [A+] No Physical Restraints

REA Reaction

1801 Escape Room’s Josep Fontcalda House Museum felt like a cross between an experientially innovative meal at a Michelin star restaurant and a meticulously handcrafted birthday present from a loving grandparent. More than just an escape room, Josep Fontcalda House Museum was a gallery of mechanical marvels and sublime secrets. We could sense the love and care that went into the construction of every tiny detail, each cleverly concealed within a rustically charming yet relatively unassuming environment.

My team essentially solved the game multiple times, as we each wanted to try our hand at operating each mechanism. When many top escape rooms are increasingly leaning into fancier tech and electronics, Josep Fontcalda House Museum played to their strengths while also iterating on the very roots of escape room gameplay. How can we build on the simple tactile satisfaction of popping open a padlock? Maybe the answer is not, in fact, more RFIDs and Arduinos, but rather more gears, pulleys, and hidden compartments — mechanisms that players can operate themselves and directly feel every little click and perfect tolerance.

In my humble opinion, escape rooms — like most any art form — are at their best when they can evoke strong, personal, emotional reactions. One of my teammates remarked after our game, “My grandfather is the person in the world I’d most have wanted to show this to — which is unusual, as we didn’t share much artistic interest overlap — but he was a carpenter whose sense of humor tended toward things like making people kitchen cutting boards shaped like pigs as gifts. I think he might have actually fallen over laughing by the ending of Josep Fontcalda.”

1801 Escape Room managed to pull off this level of wholesome, playful connection in a space which, while far from the tiniest escape room I’ve played, was quite compact by Barcelona standards. Yet, by building momentum primarily through the reveal of new layers rather than new environments, this game exemplified the thesis of my recent article A Case for Smaller Sets and Deeper Worlds. Josep Fontcalda House Museum fell into the rare category of “idiosyncratic escape rooms that have been constructed by master craftspeople who know how to create zany mechanisms” — alongside a handful of other similarly minded passion projects scattered around the world, such as Baron Beeckman’s Het Testament in Belgium and Groenlo – 1627 in the Netherlands.

Sadly, Josep Fontcalda House Museum is slated to close by the end of 2025. This experience will inevitably not land the same for every player, especially for those expecting massive sets, showy theatrics, or fancy tech, but if this sounds like the game for you, then this will really be the game for you. It’s well worth the somewhat lengthy pilgrimage up from Barcelona to visit this unique museum before it’s gone forever.

Who is this for?

• Puzzle lovers
• Story seekers
• Scenery snobs
• Any experience level
• Players who don’t need to be a part of every puzzle

Why play?

• A secret museum of secrets
• Top-tier woodworking
• Creative puzzle design
• So much delight

Story

Josep Fontcalda was a mathematician and chemist who’d become obsessed with the 4 elements, and the discovery of a mysterious fifth element. We arrived at his personal house museum for a private tour.

Setting

Josep Fontcalda House Museum was a private collection in a historical house. With exposed stone walls, old photos, and no shortage of heirloom furniture, we were instantly transported back into a different era. The museum was well organized and informative, with plenty of sleek modern signage to help guide our visit.

Gameplay

1801 Escape Room’s Josep Fontcalda House Museum was a standard escape room with a moderate level of difficulty.

Core gameplay revolved around solving puzzles and making observations.

Analysis

➕ 1801 Escape Room used their unique historical setting creatively and efficiently, with a dizzying density of hidden layers. The space was jam-packed with mechanical marvels, offering a high level of tactile satisfaction that’s nearly impossible to get from electronics. This was a prime example of how to imbue wonder in the mundane.

➕ Josep Fontcalda House Museum didn’t just pretend to be a museum; it was an actual museum, showcasing numerous original works of art. But this wasn’t just any old museum… it was a museum of secrets.

➕ The gameplay was idiosyncratic in some truly delightful ways. It was clearly signposted and flowed well, while also delivering a constant stream of satisfying environmental ahas that felt notably distinct from the puzzle style common in most escape rooms.

➕ While many interactions in Josep Fontcalda House Museum relied on highly custom components, we equally appreciated when the gameplay offered atypical ways of interacting with normal objects. In particular, one puzzle sneakily turned a common household tool into our tour guide, leading us to navigate the space in a clever manner.

➕/➖ The music was lovely and relaxing, perfectly setting the tone for most of the experience. However, the soundtrack was ever so slightly off from being a perfect loop, which perhaps was only evident to our trained musician ears. There was also a somewhat jarring overlap in the transition between 2 contrasting soundtracks.

➕ The space transformed in some interesting ways, always placing the players at the center of the action rather than just having cool things happen around us. One particular transition was especially a step up from the rest.

➖/➕ We encountered a few items which seemed like they could have been part of a puzzle, yet were never used. I’m typically against red herrings in escape rooms, but in the case of the Josep Fontcalda House Museum, these potential red herrings rarely distracted from the core solve path. In fact, in my team’s interpretation of the narrative, the inclusion of these extra details was well justified, but your mileage may vary.

➕ We were overwhelmed with delight throughout just about the entire game, but especially so in the final scene, in which 1801 Escape Room concocted a magical mechanical manifestation of childlike wonder. In addition to being a fun space to visit, it was a phenomenal work of art. It also presented a viscerally potent spin on an uncommon escape room trope.

👏 I applaud 1801 Escape Room for ending on a cheery, personal, and uplifting note. Bravo!

Tips For Visiting

• This game is available in English.
• We recommend traveling to 1801 Escape Room by car. It’s possible to get a taxi or rideshare there, but it’s difficult to get a return car. There’s also a fairly direct train from Barcelona… but leave time for a bus to get across town. Or for a bonus adventure, do what I did and walk an hour to the train station, along some slightly sketchy but remarkably scenic regional highways.

Book your hour with 1801 Escape Room’s Josep Fontcalda House Museum, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.