Dali would be amused: his wife Gala’s castle love nest attracts a growing number of visitors but the House of God next door is closed.

Púbol Castle adjoins the 14thcentury church on the edge of a charming rural hamlet set amid the lush emerald green of the Lower Empordà, 25 miles south of Dalí’s Theatre Museum in Figueres.

If the walls around Gala’s summer retreat could speak, we would know more about the high jinks that went on behind them during the years she enjoyed at her secluded love nest. It was, perhaps, with good reason that Gala insisted Dalí could only visit by written invitation.

The castle in Púbol was found by Enric Sabater, Dalí’s secretary, who spotted it from a plane and handed his aerial photographs to the artist. It was love at first sight for the couple, who bought the abandoned medieval ruin for about £6,000 in 1969. The Dalís instructed Emilio Puignau, their Portlligat builder, to renovate the castle, intended as a refuge for Gala, in just seven months.

Visiting the castle after the eccentricity of Portlligat, one is instantly struck by the conservative formality of the somewhat spartan castle.

Dalí amused himself by placing concrete sculptures of elephants with long spindly legs by the hedges in the garden and by planting a series of multicoloured heads of his beloved Richard Wagner beside the swimming pool.

Inside the house Dalí embellished the ceiling of the Coat of Arms room with an elaborate fantasy of the sky. He also adorned the walls with heraldic shields and painted a false door. In a corner he placed a bronze throne for Gala on a blue dais flanked by two snarling beasts.

Dali retreated to Púbol after Gala died in 1982 and it became his studio and the mausoleum to his muse. He painted his last work on an easel by a window in the simple dining room. Alongside are his brushes and open paintbox. Above the door that leads to Gala’s quarters is a picture of her as a severe angel.

The piano room is where Jeff Fenholt, Gala’s American toy boy singer, played non-celestial music, usually in the middle of the night. In this room hangs Gala’s Castle at Púbol painted by Dalí between 1971-73.

Having hidden the real radiators behind steel screens, Dalí, perverse as ever, decided to create trompe l’oeil radiators on them.

The bathroom is finely decorated with Dutch tiles in homage to Vermeer. In the small kitchen, the elaborate engraved cutlery used by Gala is displayed, along with and an old bottle of liqueur with its silvered glass. Dalí used these shiny bottles in experiments with curved reflections of flat artwork, anamorphosis, later developed for CinemaScope.

Among the record albums stored in a chest in the living room, the works of Wagner, Handel and Corelli are prominent.

Gala’s main indulgence appears to have been her designer clothes — outfits by Coco Chanel, Christian Dior, Schiaparelli and Pierre Cardin are on show. She was buried in her favourite red Dior dress.

A double tomb was built by Puignau for Gala and Dalí in the crypt in the castle’s cellar. Beneath the vaulted ceiling, a simple cross marks Gala’s grave, alongside a vase of silk flowers.

Her corpse was brought to Púbol from Portlligat, propped up beside a nurse in the back of Dalí’s cadillac. To avoid time-consuming paper work and fulfil her wish to be buried in Púbol, doctors connived to say she died there. On that morning in June 1982, the couple’s distraught chauffeur reflected that Gala usually sat in the front with him. Her last transport, with its Monaco plates, can be seen in the castle’s garage.

Dalí never joined Gala in death. He was badly burnt in a fire at Púbol and returned to Figueres, where he died five years later in 1989 and lies buried in his museum.

Details: Casa-Museu Castell: Gala Dalí, Púbol www.salvador-dali.org/museus

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