Sights in Barcelona
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Park Güell
North of Gràcia and about 4km from Plaça de Catalunya, Park Güell is where Gaudí turned his hand to landscape gardening. It’s a strange, enchanting place where his passion for natural forms really took flight – to the point where the artificial almost seems more natural than the natural.
Park Güell originated in 1900, when Count Eusebi Güell bought a tree-covered hillside (then outside Barcelona) and hired Gaudí to create a miniature city of houses for the wealthy in landscaped grounds. The project was a commercial flop and was abandoned in 1914 – but not before Gaudí had created 3km of roads and walks, steps, a plaza and two gatehouses in his inimitable manner.…
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La Sagrada Família
If you have time for only one sightseeing outing, this should be it. La Sagrada Família inspires awe by its sheer verticality, and in the manner of the medieval cathedrals it emulates, it’s still under construction after more than 100 years. When completed, the highest tower will be more than half as high again as those that stand today.
Unfinished it may be, but it attracts around 2.8 million visitors a year and is the most visited monument in Spain. The most important recent tourist was Pope Benedict XVI, who consecrated the church in a huge ceremony in November 2010.
The Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família (Expiatory Temple of the Holy Family) was Antoni Gaudí’s…
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Casa Batlló
One of the strangest residential buildings in Europe, this is Gaudí at his hallucinogenic best. The facade, sprinkled with bits of blue, mauve and green tiles and studded with wave-shaped window frames and balconies, rises to an uneven blue-tiled roof with a solitary tower.
It is one of the three houses on the block between Carrer del Consell de Cent and Carrer d’Aragó that gave it the playful name Manzana de la Discordia, meaning ‘Apple (Block) of Discord’. The others are Puig i Cadafalch’s Casa Amatller and Domènech i Montaner’s Casa Lleó Morera. They were all renovated between 1898 and 1906 and show how eclectic a ‘style’ Modernisme was.
Locals know…
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Fundació Joan Miró
Joan Miró, the city’s best-known 20th-century artistic progeny, bequeathed this art foundation to his hometown in 1971. Its light-filled buildings, designed by close friend and architect Josep Lluís Sert (who also built Miró’s Mallorca studios), are crammed with seminal works, from Miró’s earliest timid sketches to paintings from his last years.
Sert's shimmering white temple to the art of one of the stars of the 20th-century Spanish firmament is considered one of the world's most outstanding museum buildings; the architect designed it after spending much of Franco's dictatorship years in the US, as the head of the School of Design at Harvard University. The…
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Montserrat
Montserrat (Serrated Mountain) is the spiritual heart of Catalonia and your best opportunity to enjoy awesome scenery on a day trip from Barcelona. Comprising a massif of limestone pinnacles rising precipitously over gorges, this wondrous place has drawn hermits (er, independent travellers) since the 5th century.
Montserrat, 50km (31mi) northwest of Barcelona, has weird rocky crags, ruined hermitage caves, a monastery and hordes of tourists from the Costa Brava. The Monestir de Montserrat was founded in 1025 to commemorate numerous visions of the Virgin Mary. Today it houses a community of about 80 monks, and pilgrims come to venerate La Moreneta (the Black Virgin), a…
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Plaça Reial & Around
Just south of Carrer de Ferran, near its La Rambla end, Plaça Reial is a traffic-free plaza whose 19th-century neoclassical facades are punctuated by numerous eateries, bars and nightspots. It was created on the site of a convent, one of several destroyed along La Rambla (the strip was teeming with religious institutions) in the wake of the Spain-wide disentailment laws that stripped the Church of much of its property.
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Museu del Futbol Club Barcelona
One of Barcelona's most visited museums is the Museu del Futbol Club Barcelona, next to the club's giant Camp Nou stadium. The museum, renovated in 2010, provides a high-tech view into the club, with massive touch screens allowing visitors to explore arcane aspects of the legendary team. The best bits of the museum itself are the photo section, the goal videos and the views out over the stadium. You can admire the (in at least one case literally) golden boots of great goalscorers of the past and learn about the greats who have played for Barça over the years, including Maradona, Ronaldinho, Kubala and many others.
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Palau de la Música Catalana
This concert hall is a high point of Barcelona’s Modernista architecture. It’s not exactly a symphony, but more a series of crescendos in tile, brick, sculpted stone and stained glass. Built by Domènech i Montaner between 1905 and 1908 for the Orfeo Català musical society, it was conceived as a temple for the Catalan Renaixença (Renaissance).
The palace was built with the help of some of the best Catalan artisans of the time, in the cloister of the former Convent de Sant Francesc, and since 1990 it has undergone several major changes.
The palau, like a peacock, shows off much of its splendour on the outside. Take in the principal facade with its mosaics, floral…
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Castell de Montjuïc
The forbidding Castell (castle or fort) de Montjuïc dominates the southeastern heights of Montjuïc and enjoys commanding views over the Mediterranean. It dates, in its present form, from the late 17th and 18th centuries. For most of its dark history, it has been used to watch over the city and as a political prison and killing ground.
Anarchists were executed here around the end of the 19th century, fascists during the civil war and Republicans after it – most notoriously Lluís Companys in 1940. The castle is surrounded by a network of ditches and walls (from which its strategic position over the city and port become clear).
Until 2009 the castle was home to a…
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Port Olímpic
A busy marina built for the Olympic sailing events, Port Olímpic is surrounded by bars and restaurants. An eye-catcher on the approach from La Barceloneta is Frank Gehry’s giant copper Peix (Fish) sculpture. The area behind Port Olímpic, dominated by twin-tower blocks (the luxury Hotel Arts Barcelona and the Torre Mapfre office block), is the former Vila Olímpica living quarters for the Olympic competitors, which was later sold off as apartments.
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Centre d’Interpretació del Call
Once a 14th-century house of the Jewish weaver Jucef Bonhiac, this small visitors centre is dedicated to the history of Barcelona’s Jewish quarter, the Call. Glass sections in the ground floor allow you to inspect Mr Bonhiac’s former wells and storage space. The house, also known as the Casa de l’Alquimista (Alchemist’s House), hosts a modest display of Jewish artefacts, including ceramics excavated in the area of the Call, along with explanations and maps of the one-time Jewish quarter.
The area between Carrer dels Banys Nous and Plaça de Sant Jaume was the heart of the city’s medieval Jewish quarter, or Call Major, until a bloody pogrom in the 14th century drove…
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Catedral
You can reach Barcelona’s Catedral, one of its most magnificent Gothic structures, by following Carrer del Bisbe northwest from Plaça de Sant Jaume. The narrow old streets around the cathedral are traffic-free and dotted with occasionally very talented buskers.
The best view of the cathedral is from Plaça de la Seu beneath its main northwest facade. Unlike most of the building, which dates from between 1298 and 1460, this facade was not created until the 1870s. They say it is based on a 1408 design and it is odd in that it reflects northern-European Gothic styles rather than the sparer, Catalan version.
The interior of the cathedral is a broad, soaring space. It is…
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Museu Picasso
The setting alone, in five contiguous medieval stone mansions, makes the Museu Picasso unique (and worth the probable queues). The pretty courtyards, galleries and staircases preserved in the first three of these buildings are as delightful as the collection inside.
While the collection concentrates on the artist’s formative years – sometimes disappointing for those hoping for a feast of his better-known later works (they had better head for Paris) – there is enough material from subsequent periods to give you a thorough impression of the man’s versatility and genius. Above all, you come away feeling that Picasso was the true original, always one step ahead of himself…
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Beaches
A series of pleasant beaches stretches northeast from the Port Olímpic marina. They are largely artificial but this doesn’t stop an estimated 7 million bathers from piling in every year! Each autumn, storms wash much of the sand out to sea and the town hall patiently replaces it for the following season. From 2009, a series of underwater barrages in front of some of the beaches should reduce the waves caused by these storms and save a lot of trouble. The southernmost beach, Platja de la Nova Icària, is the busiest. Behind it, across the Avinguda del Litoral highway, is the Plaça dels Champions, site of the rusting three-tiered platform used to honour medallists in the…
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Museu d'Història de Barcelona
One of Barcelona's most fascinating museums takes you back through the centuries to the very foundations of Roman Barcino. You'll stroll over ruins of the old streets, sewers, laundries and wine- and fish-making factories that flourished here following the town's funding by Emperor Augustus around 10 BC. Equally impressive is the building itself, which was once part of the Palau Reial Major (Grand Royal Palace) on Plaça del Rei (King’s Sq, the former palace’s courtyard), among the key locations of medieval princely power in Barcelona.The square is frequently the scene of organised or impromptu concerts and is one of the most atmospheric corners of the medieval city.
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Palau de la Generalitat, Plaça de Sant Jaume
Founded in the early 15th century on land that had largely belonged to the city’s by-then defunct Jewish community to house Catalonia’s government, the Palau de la Generalitat was extended over the centuries as its importance (and bureaucracy) grew. Marc Safont designed the original Gothic main entrance on Carrer del Bisbe. The modern main entrance on Plaça de Sant Jaume is a late-Renaissance job with neoclassical leanings. If you wander by in the evening, squint up through the windows into the Saló de Sant Jordi and you will get some idea of the sumptuousness of the interior. If you do get inside, you’re in for a treat. Normally you will have to enter from Carrer…
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La Pedrera
This undulating beast is another madcap Gaudí masterpiece, built in 1905-10 as a combined apartment and office block. Formally called Casa Milà, after the businessman who commissioned it, it is better known as La Pedrera (the Quarry) because of its uneven grey stone facade, which ripples around the corner of Carrer de Provença.
Pere Milà had married the older and far richer Roser Guardiola, the wealthy widow of Josep Guardiola, and knew how to spend his new wife's money – Milà was one of the city’s first car owners and Gaudí built parking space into this building, itself a first. When commissioned to design this apartment building, Gaudí wanted to top anything else…
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Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya
From across the city, the bombastic neobaroque silhouette of the Palau Nacional can be seen on the slopes of Montjuïc. Built for the 1929 World Exhibition and restored in 2005, it houses a vast collection of mostly Catalan art spanning the early Middle Ages to the early 20th century. The high point is the collection of extraordinary Romanesque frescoes.
This building has come to be one of the city’s prime symbols of the region’s separate, Catalan identity, but the fact that it was constructed under the centralist dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera, lends a whiff of irony.
The real highlight here is the Romanesque art section, considered the most important…
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Palau Reial de Pedralbes
Across Avinguda Diagonal from the main campus of the Universitat de Barcelona is the entrance to Parc del Palau Reial. In the park is the Palau Reial de Pedralbes, an early-20th-century building that belonged to the family of Eusebi Güell (Gaudí’s patron) until they handed it over to the city in 1926 to serve as a royal residence. Among its guests have been King Alfonso XIII, the president of Catalonia and General Franco.
The palace houses three museums, two of them temporarily housed here.
The Museu de Ceràmica has a good collection of Spanish ceramics from the 10th to 19th centuries, including work by Picasso and Miró. Spain inherited from the Muslims, and then…
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Parc d’traccions
The reason most barcelonins come up to Tibidabo is for some thrills (but hopefully no spills) in this funfair, close to the top funicular station. Among the main attractions are El Pndol, La Muntanya Russa and Hurakan. El Pndol is a giant arm holding four passengers, which drops them at a speed that reaches 100km/h in a period of less than three seconds (a force of four times gravity) before swinging outward – not for the squeamish. La Muntanya Russa is a massive new big dipper, which at its high point affords wonderful views before plunging you at 80km/h through woods. Hurakan tosses its passengers about with sudden drops and stomach-turning 360-degree turns. Far tamer…
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Manzana de la Discordia
This is one of the most wonderful roads in Barcelona. The discord came about because various well-to-do families all wanted their houses done in the latest style and each hired a different architect. Here Gaudí, Enric Sagnier and others battle it out in bricks and mortar. Not to be missed.
On the first corner, at No 35, is Domenech i Montaner's most lavish residence, Casa Lleo Morera. Its ground floor facade was ripped out in the 1940s by philistines who wanted bigger shop windows. But the decorative nymphs and reliefs, depicting the owners work and hobbies, are still intact and the lobby is wonderfully whimsical.
Casa Batlo, at No 43, is a remodelled Gaudífied gem…
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Museu Marítim
Venice had its Arsenal and Barcelona the Reials Drassanes (Royal Shipyards), from which Don Juan of Austria’s flagship galley was launched to lead a joint Spanish-Venetian fleet into the momentous Battle of Lepanto against the Turks in 1571.
These mighty Gothic shipyards are not as extensive as their Venetian counterparts but they’re an extraordinary piece of civilian architecture nonetheless. Today the broad arches shelter the Museu Marítim, the city’s seafaring-history museum and one of the most fascinating museums in town.
The shipyards were, in their heyday, among the greatest in Europe. Begun in the 13th century and completed by 1378, the long, arched bays (the…
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Museu de la Música
Some 500 instruments (less than a third of those held) are on show in this museum, housed on the 2nd floor of the administration building in L’Auditori, the city’s main classical-music concert hall.
Instruments range from a 17th-century baroque guitar through to lutes (look out for the many-stringed 1641 archilute from Venice), violins, Japanese kotos, sitars from India, eight organs (some dating from the 18th century), pianos, a varied collection of drums and other percussion instruments from across Spain and beyond, along with all sorts of phonographs and gramophones. There are some odd pieces indeed, like the buccèn, a snake-head-adorned brass instrument.
Much of…
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Museu de les Arts Decoratives, Palau Reial de Pedralbes
The Museu de les Arts Decoratives in Palau Reial de Pedralbes brings together an eclectic assortment of furnishings, ornaments and knick-knacks dating as far back as the Romanesque period. The plush and somewhat stuffy elegance of Empire- and Isabelline-style divans can be neatly compared with some of the more tasteless ideas to emerge on the subject of seating in the 1970s. It is planned eventually to house these collections in a brand-new design museum in Plaça de les Glòries Catalanes. When this will happen is open to speculation and, in the meantime, some of the collection will get a new temporary home in what was until 2008 the Museu Tèxtil i d’Indumentària in…
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Sinagoga Maj14
When an Argentine investor bought a run-down electrician’s store with an eye to converting it into central Barcelona’s umpteenth bar, he could hardly have known he had stumbled onto the remains of what could be the city’s main medieval synagogue (some historians cast doubt on the claim). Remnants of medieval and Roman-era walls remain in the small vaulted space that you enter from the street. Also remaining are tanners’ wells installed in the 15th century. The second chamber has been spruced up for use as a synagogue. A remnant of late-Roman-era wall here, given its orientation facing Jerusalem, has led some to speculate that there was a synagogue here even in Roman…
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