Inside the New Dali Museum

In my last posting, I showed this view of St. Petersburg's new Dali Museum. Now we'll go inside for an Opening Day tour!

One enters and leaves the Dali Museum through a colorful store that's a repository of all things surreal. Every imaginable book pertaining to surrealism is represented, as well as books on subject matter that interested Dali, such as the Golden Mean.

Next to the gift shop is this classic Rolls-Royce, covered in seaweed and snails. The driver wears antique diving gear and the passenger is a mermaid.

The windows are designed to appear as though it's always raining inside the car, and lighting and sound effects evoke a thunderstorm.

The ground floor has a café with a sitting area, as well as a counter with these cool stools.

After the geodesic glass, the focus of the museum's interior is a spiraling staircase, modeled after the DNA double helix. It was a shape that intrigued Salvador Dali.

The view is of the St. Petersburg bayfront, and Tampa Bay.

I thought this tangent structure was interesting.

Some of Salvador Dali's most famous works are actually surprisingly small. Beginning in 1948, though, Dali worked on a monumental scale, and these later pieces are referred to as "masterworks." I would have loved to have shown you peeks into the galleries, but museum rules forbid photographing those areas. Suffice to say, masterworks abound in the most comprehensive collection of Dali, and the largest collection of his work beyond Spain.

 1 Dali Blvd., on the St. Petersburg bayfront,

at the southern end of Bayshore Drive SE

Hours: 10-5:30 p.m., Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday

10 a.m.-8 p.m., Thursday  •  Noon-5:30 p.m., Sunday