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Ajuntament
This town hall has been the seat of city power since the 14th century and has a Catalan Gothic side façade on Carrer de la Ciutat. Belying its blandly renovated, neoclassical front is a spectacular interior featuring a majestic staircase and the splendidly restored Saló de Cent (Chamber of the One Hundred).
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Arc de Triomf
This curious triumphal gate, with its Islamic-style brickwork, was the ceremonial entrance to the 1888 Universal Exhibition. What triumph it commemorates isn't clear - probably just getting the thing built more or less in time.
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Barcelona Propera
The Edifici Fòrum is home to a permanent exhibition on Barcelona's urban transformation, Barcelona Propera. The highlight is an amazingly detailed 1:1000 scale model of the city. It took 20,000 man-hours (over five months) to create and is claimed to be the biggest such city model in Europe.
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Bellesguard
In typical Gaudí fashion, exposed brick, wrought iron and a sense of fairy-tale playfulness combine to give this private mansion, built in 1909, an unreal feel. It's a bit of a hike, so you need to be a fan of obscure things off beaten tracks.
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Casa Batlló
This is Gaudí at his hallucinogenic best, and one of the strangest residential buildings in Europe. The façade's blue, mauve and green tile studded with wave-shaped window frames and balconies, rises to an uneven blue-tiled roof with a solitary tower. Locals know it variously as the casa dels ossos (house of bones) or casa del drac (house of the dragon).
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Casa Calvet
Gaudí's first apartment block and most conventional building won him the only award of his life - the city council's prize for the best building of 1900. It's sober and straight from the outside, but some hints of whimsy can be seen in the ground-floor restaurant.
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Casa de l'Ardiaca
This 16th-century house is home to the city's archives and has a supremely serene courtyard, renovated by Domènech i Montaner in 1902. You can get a good glimpse at some stout Roman wall in here.
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Casa de les Punxes
Puig i Cadafalch could have been eating too much cheese late at night when he created this neo-Gothic fantasy, which was built between 1903 and 1905. Officially the Casa Terrades, the building's pointed turrets earned it the nickname Casa de les Punxes (House of the Spikes).
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Casa Museu Gaudí
Worth a gander if you're in Park Güell , this is the house where Gaudí spent many of his later years. The museum includes furniture designed by Gaudí and his mates, along with personal effects and an ascetically narrow bed upon which he probably fantasised about completing La Sagrada Família.
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Catedral
The majestic Catedral with its irregular Romanesque cloister and powerful Gothic interior, lords it over the rest of the Girona.
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Centre d'Interpretació
Just inside the main entrance of Park Güell on Carrer d'Olot, which is immediately recognisable by the two Hansel-and-Gretel gatehouses, visit the park's Centre d'Interpretació in the Pavelló de Consergeria, the curvaceous, Gaudian former porter's home that hosts a display on Gaudí's building methods and park history.
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Edifici de Gas Natural
While only 100m high, this brand-new shimmering glass waterfront tower - designed by Enric Miralles - is extraordinary for its mirrorlike surface and weirdly protruding adjunct buildings, which could be giant glass cliffs bursting from the main tower's flank.
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Església De Betlem
The early 18th-century Church of Jerusalem was once considered the most splendid of Barcelona's few baroque offerings. Its exterior still makes a powerful impression, but arsonists destroyed much of the inside at the outset of the civil war in 1936. In the run-up to Christmas, check out the pessebres (nativity scenes).
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Església de Santa Maria del Mar
Barcelona's most powerful and beguiling Gothic temple stands serenely amid the swirling crowds that daily invade the El Born area, once the heart of local commerce and now devoted to local diversion.
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La Font Màgica
Delightfully over the top, the biggest of Montjuïc's famous fountains splashes into life with an irresistible summer-evening extravaganza of music and light. Whether it's to the tune of Tchaikovsky or Abba, you'll be mesmerised by the waterworks.
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La Sagrada Família
La Sagrada Família is truly awe-inspiring. Even if you don't have much time, don't miss it. The most ambitious work of Barcelona's favourite son, Antoni Gaudí, the magnificent spires of the unfinished cathedral imprint themselves boldly against the sky with swelling outlines inspired by the holy Montserrat.
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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.
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Mercat del Born
The long-silent 19th-century Mercat del Born is destined to become a museum-cum-cultural centre after the discovery in 2000 of a whole swath of late-medieval Barcelona that had been flattened to make way for the sinister Ciutadella fortress (see Parc de la Ciutadella) in the 18th century.
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Monument a Colom
Centuries after he stumbled across the Americas, Columbus was honoured with this 60m monument, built for the Universal Exhibition in 1888. It looks like he's urging the tourists to go elsewhere, but you can catch a lift to the soles of his feet for a fine view.
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Palau de la Generalitat
This seat of Catalan government was adapted from several Gothic mansions in what had been the Jewish ghetto (known as the Call) in the early 15th century and extended over time. The original Gothic façade on Carrer del Bisbe Irurita (C2) features a relief of St George by Pere Joan in 1418.
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Pavelló Mies Van Der Rohe
This is a replica of a structure erected for - and demolished with - the 1929 World Exhibition. In hindsight it was considered a milestone of modern architecture and was rebuilt in 1986. With a light and airy design comprising horizontal planes, it reveals Mies van der Rohe's vision of a new urban environment.
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Plaça Reial
This pretty 19th-century square with neoclassical façades, palm trees and numerous noisy restaurants and bars was created on the site of a convent. The elegant lampposts were Gaudí's first commission in the big smoke.
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Poble Espanyol
Something of an impostor, the Spanish Village was put together for the 1929 World Exhibition. It comprises replicas of famous buildings and examples of traditional architecture from all over Spain. For a tourist trap, it's quite engaging, but its craft shops, restaurants and bars share the unfortunate distinction of being overpriced.
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Sitges
Only half an hour from Barcelona by train, Sitges is a unique resort that in summer attracts hordes of fashionable city folk and a huge international gay set. A former fishing village, it was a trendy hang-out for artists and bohemians in the 1890s and has remained one of Spain's more unconventional resorts ever since.
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Torre Agbar
Barcelona's very own cucumber-shaped tower, Jean Nouvel's luminous Torre Agbar (the headquarters of the city water company) is the most daring addition to Barcelona's skyline since the first towers of La Sagrada Família went up. Completed in 2005, it shimmers in shades of midnight blue and lipstick red, especially at night. You can wander into the foyer.
