The Spanish government’s formal declaration of the Dali homestead in Port Lligat as “a picturesque site of special interest to the nation” did more than flatter the maestro — it underscored his claim to divinity.

The announcement had turned his little corner of the world into “a Dalinian church”, he told Andre Parinaud for “The Unspeakable Confessions” in 1976.

At the time he planned on having his body preserved immediately after death so that he could be brought back to life at some point in the future.

“I should not be unhappy if some day humanity declared my person to be sacred and that from generation to generation the torch of my body were transmitted as the eternal witness to evolution.”

In his interviews with Parinaud, Dali declared himself a mystical spirit who could control space-time at will. His paintings were sacred masses through which he shared the eucharist of his knowledge with the followers of the “Dalinian mystique”, he said. “A new consciousness of humanity may start with me, Dali.”

“I can say that I am today the man nearest to the existence of God, the least mad of men and the term divine sometimes applied to me expresses an existential reality.”

Three decades earlier Dali hadn’t been nearly so exalted. In his 1942 autobiography “The Secret Life” he wrote of cherishing the house in Port Lligat, even if Gala was off in Paris soaking up luxury. He preferred the solitude.

“Port Lligat: a life of asceticism, of isolation. It was there that I learned to impoverish myself … A life that was hard, without metaphor or wine, a life with the light of eternity. The lucubrations of Paris, the lights of the city, and of the jewels of the Rue de la Paix, could not resist this other light — total, centuries-old, poor, serene and fearless.”

“Port Lligat is a place for accomplishments,” Dali declared on another occasion. “It is the perfect place for my work. Everything comes together: time passes slowly and every hour has its right dimension. There is a geologic tranquility: it is a unique planetary case.”

Salvador and Gala were roaming France when an offer of patronage came from the Vicomte de Noailles (read more about him in this post).

“I immediately thought of buying the shack belonging to Lydia’s sons at Port Lligat and of fixing it up to make it habitable,” Dali wrote years later, referring to Lydia Noguer, a fisherman’s wife in Cadaques who he’d known since his was a boy. Her sons used the hut for storage.

It “happened to be set exactly in the spot which I liked best in all the world. With the capriciousness which always characterises my decisions, it became in a moment the only spot where I would, where I could, live.”

Noailles fronted Dali 29,000 francs to buy the hut and he and Gala travelled to Cadaques, only to be turned away by the Hotel Miramar, Dali said, because it’s owner was “taking my father’s side” in the family row over Gala.

“We had to go to a tiny boarding house, where one of our former maids did everything she could to make our stay bearable. The only people with whom I was interested in keeping on good terms were the dozen fishermen of Port Lligat who, being more independent of the opinions of Cadaques, received us at first with reserve, but were quickly captivated by Gala’s irresistibly winning nature and by the aureole of my prestige.

“They knew that the papers were writing about me. ‘He’s young,’ they said. ‘He doesn’t need his father’s money. He’s free to do what he likes with his youth.’

“We hired a carpenter, and together Gala and I worked out all the details, from the number of steps there were to be in the stairway to the dimensions of the smallest window. None of the palaces of Ludwig II of Bavaria aroused one half the anxiety in his heart that this little shack kindled in ours.

“The shack was to be composed of one room about four metres square, which was to serve as dining room, bedroom, studio and entrance hall. One went up a few steps, and on a little hallway opened three doors leading to a shower, a toilet and a kitchen hardly big enough to move around in.

“I wanted it to be very small — the smaller, the more intra-uterine. We had brought the nickel and glass furniture from our Paris apartment, and we covered the walls with several coats of enamel. Not being in a position to carry out any of my delirious decorative ideas, I wanted only the exact proportions required by the two of us and the two of us alone.

“The only extravagant ornament which I planned to use was a very, very small milk tooth of mine which had never been replaced, and which I had just lost. It was white and transparent like a rice grain, and I wanted to pierce a hole in it and hang it by a thread from the mathematical centre of the ceiling.”

There were eventually nine fishermen’s huts in all, assembled gradually uphill. Dali ultimately realised it was “a true biological structure” where “each new pulse in our life has its own new cell, a room”.

Dali referred to Lydia Noguer in his autobiography “The Secret Life: as the “Godmother of my madness”, and when biographer Ian Gibson tracked her down, she wrote on the back of a photograph of herself, “This woman is the witch responsible for the whole business of Dali and a whole lot more besides”. What more? Read on in this post.

Life magazine pictures the colossus of Port Lligat Beach, and the master at work in his studio, apparently on “The Battle of Tetuan”. A blow-up of Velazquez’s self-portrait watches him, as does his own.

Below, another view of the studio. For conservation’s sake, visits today have to be arranged in advance, and access is not allowed to all areas, leaving guests often craning their necks to see what they can.

John Lanois caught the maestro peeking at the patio in 1965. Below, more relaxed with rams’ horns and coconut.

Outside the house today is the Clock Hut, where visitors can check their coats. Dali used to invite the local fishermen when they’d finished repainting their boats to use up the remaining paint by swabbing it on the doors of the hut. He called the multi-coloured results “the best abstract pictures in the history of painting”.

Guests enter the house itself via the Bear Lobby, from which the building spreads out in a labyrinth of narrow passageways and slight changes in floor level. All the windows have different shapes.

The ground floor and Rooms 7 to 12 were Salvador and Gala’s main living area, the studio and Rooms 5 and 6 his workplace, and their guests were entertained outside, in Room 13 and in the courtyards, now numbered 14 and 15.

On the terrace by the phallic pool is the little shrine of Pirelli tires and model bullfighters, and several chairs with six legs — the rear two on an outward angle — that a village artisan made for him because Dali so often leaned so far back in his chair that he tumbled over.

The telephone booth, routinely used by Dali’s guests, was supposedly one of the first installed in Spain.

And then there’s the dovecote that Dali fashioned out of plaster and wooden vineyard-tending forks on which birds could perch.

Below, the couple ensconsed after the place was as fixed up as it would ever get, photographed by Robert Descharnes.

In August 2009 the Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation announced that another area of the property had been opened to visitors, an upper-floor “circular construction” Dali had used as a secondary workshop “to make sculptures and performances”.

Its skylight, the foundation said, allowed him to paint subjects from below. Perforated ceramic vases resonated to gusts of wind, and there is a piano Dali used during some of his “performances”.

In 1967, Edgar Froese, who would later that year form the rock band Tangerine Dream, was invited to perform at Dali’s “Happening Afternoons” at the house, while ballet dancers pirouetted to the music of Debussy on enormous water-borne eggshells.

For his part, Dali attempted to play Satie at the piano, waist-deep in seawater.

He loved having hippies around, although it wasn’t always clear whether their appeal lay in their rebelliousness, their love of parties or the media sensation they tended to cause.

Did he partake of drugs with them? Despite the seemingly unambiguous quote attributed to him — “I do not take drugs. I am drugs” — the debate remains an open one, even at the Collect Dali Yahoo Group, several of whose members knew Dali personally.

While one member points out that Dali “practically admitted to chewing hashish 10 times” in his book “50 Secrets”, another says he’d seen the maestro decline drugs when offered, and was in fact “quite afraid of them. He would not even accept royal jelly, which was all the rage in the early ’70s, fearing someone would lace it with drugs.”

Below, a photo of the pool and Dali’s own painting of it, one of several he did, this one from about 1970. Below those, a Google Earth image of the property.

On a hillside above the house was (possibly still is — I don’t know) “Debris Christ”, a 1969 sculpture made with tree limbs, earth, the shards of a small boat, tiles and other detritus that came to hand. It depicted the pain of the crucifixion, with gnarled, decaying roots forming the crown of thorns.

It was in the skeleton of Christ’s boat, Brian Sewell claims in “Dirty Dali” (see this source), that the maestro talked him into posing for photos while masturbating.

Somewhat drunk, Sewell agreed to curl up one of Jesus’ armpits, undress and masturbate while Dali took numerous pictures and occasionally groped himself.

The following night, Sewell said, Dali’s Cadillac delivered to the house a group of hippies, the young men among whom went off with Dali to be photographed. As far as the women were concerned, according to Sewell, Dali preferred them to watch him masturbate.

Amanda Lear also did a photo shoot in the Christ — see this post.

In September 1965, Paris Match magazine published a dazzling spread of photos by Tony Saunier depicting Dali playing host to “the queen of Venus” and her entourage among the flaming shards of Cap Creus.

“The Venusians have landed!” spread was touted as a “Dali-fiction spectacular”. The setting was Cadaques’ Couliaro inlet, where Dali and Bunuel had shot scenes for “L’Age d’Or” 35 years earlier. These images were kindly shared by Karl Heinz Klumpner, who points out that many more photos of the event were published in 2000 by Harry N Abrams in the book “Encounters with Great Painters — Taken from the Annals of Paris Match“.

Dali designed the costumes for the Venusian monarch and her amphibian royal guard, drawing inspiration, he said, “from the Egyptian statues at Luxor and the Perpignan train station”.

“Dali invites Federika, his invented queen of the Venusians, to dine at his table,” ran the accompanying text. “A prisoner of her S-shaped space suit, she nevertheless remains formal throughout the course of the meal. The tablecloth is peppered with sea urchins, ‘the only animal,’ Dali says, ‘capable of space travel’.”

“After their meal, the host has prepared a modest apocalypse: 132 gallons of gas poured into the sea and set on fire. That same afternoon, Dali prepares another tableau vivant: Venusians abducting Earthlings.”