Monocle Weekend
Edition: Saturday

Today the leafy outdoor terrace of Barcelona’s Cotton House Hotel plays host to a plethora of buyable beauties from the Catalan capital’s finest designers with La Algodonera Market Lab. Expect delights including colourful rugs from Barca-based maestro Nanimarquina, furniture from budding designer Adolfo Abejón and LZF Lamps’ cute wooden toys designed by artist Isidro Ferrer. Smaller take-homes include necklaces designed by Marc Monzó for Misui, which will be sold to raise money for Fero (the Foundation for Oncological Research), among other attractive ephemera and art from Spanish talent. The Market Lab will run one Saturday a month during the summer but if you’re reading this on a Sunday, fear not: a trip to the hotel to sample chef Eva de Gil’s menu is just as rewarding. The one-time Cotton Producers Guild headquarters is at the vanguard of small hotels that are revitalising Barcelona’s buoyant hospitality scene.

How many masterpieces have gone under Simon de Pury’s hammer? How many bon mots dispatched along with them? How much money has changed hands on his watch? De Pury is the renowned Euro-aristo auctioneer whose name has often (but not always) hung over the door of auction houses and myriad enterprising projects in the art world – and The Auctioneer: Adventures in the Art Trade is his new gossipy memoir. The scions and dynasties of the art world are mused upon and gently bitched about; fortunes are made and lost; and paintings and wives are seen and loved before slipping out of De Pury’s Swiss mitts. It’s a whirl. The auctioneer’s forays into music (often as a double-breasted, Prince of Wales-checked DJ) are as idiosyncratic as the rest of this giddy life well lived and waspishly told. Less “How to” guide, more “Who did?” history.

Shutterbugs and photo enthusiasts will find it impossible to see everything at the 20th-anniversary edition of the Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival in Toronto that takes place all this month. Billing itself as one of the world's largest photography event, the annual extravaganza features works by more than 1,500 practioners from around the globe, spread out across more than 200 exhibitions throughout the city. While we are hard-pressed to pick a favourite show, visitors to the city might find it worthwhile to head to the Art Museum at the University of Toronto. Here curators have dug into the archives of more than 20 private collections to select more than 100 images that depict Toronto life from the turn of the 20th century to the present, in the showcase Counterpoints: Photography Through the Lens of Toronto Collections.

Chicago’s momentum shows no sign of slowing after its first architectural biennial last year: firms Davis Brody Bond and Marks Barfield just unveiled a new design for sleek cable cars that will traverse the city. The gondola lines will target tourists rather than functioning as a means of mass transit, linking the Navy Pier, Chicago Lakefront, the riverwalk and the city's downtown, allowing passengers to take in a rich architectural history. And while there are plenty of alternative means of seeing the city’s design highlights (including the ever-popular Chicago River tours), at 17 storeys above the water the system will offer a different perspective. Though The Skyline is in its initial phase and still hasn’t been approved by local authorities, it proves that Chicago remains on the up when it comes to design.

On location in Tunisia’s capital, we investigate how the nation’s turbulent recent history is unfolding into a rich cinematic revival. Plus: the real Florence Foster Jenkins, director Ben Rivers takes us to Morocco and, after a bizarre week in US politics, how DW Griffith’s 1915 masterpiece ‘The Birth of a Nation’ may have revived the KKK.

For our inaugural Restaurant Awards the Monocle team whipped up a list of our 50 favourite restaurants. These are the places we would go back to for the food, hospitality, great chefs, old-school staff, lively manner and perfect dining rooms. Monocle Films invites you to join us for breakfast in Toronto, lunch in Forte dei Marmi and dinner in Stockholm.