Things to do in Barcelona
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Coquette
With its spare, cut-back and designer look, this fashion store is automatically attractive in its own right. Women will love to browse through casual, feminine wear by such designers as Tsunoda, Vanessa Bruno, Chloé Baño and Hoss Intropia.
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Caelum
Centuries of heavenly gastronomic tradition from across Spain are concentrated in this exquisite medieval space in the heart of the city. Sweets (such as the irresistible marzipan from Toledo) made by nuns in convents across the country make their way to this den of delicacies. There's a shop adjoining the pretty cafe where you can buy goodies to take home; there's also an atmospheric underground chamber where you can secret yourself for tea and pastries from 3.30pm to closing time.
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Monty Café
This laid-back Italian-run cafe has a terracotta floor, art on the walls, classic marble-top tables and a series of varied, secondhand lounges down one side and a bar at the back. Great for coffee, a long list of teas and cocktails, it also offers food from pasta to bruschetta. It’s a great place to lounge around over your laptop.
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Palau de Dalmases - Espai Barroc
Perhaps the most pretentious bar in town, this 'baroque space' occupies the ground floor of a handsome 15th-century palace. Like a Peter Greenaway set, it is often the stage for a little light baroque music or operetta - the perfect accompaniment to your outlandishly priced goblets of wine.
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Organic
As you wander into this sprawling vegetarian spot, to the left is the open kitchen, where you choose from a limited range of options that change from day to day. Servings are generous and imaginative. The salad buffet is copious and desserts are good. The set lunch costs €9.50 plus drinks.
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Robadors 23
On what remains a classic dodgy El Raval street, where a hardy band of streetwalkers, junkies and other misfits hangs out in spite of all the work being carried out to gentrify the area, a narrow little bar has made a name for itself with its Wednesday night gigs.
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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…
reviewed
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Crusto
A French-inspired bakery and pastry shop, its wonderful perfume of freshly baked bread, baguettes, croissants and countless pastries will be enough to convince you that it’s worth pulling up a stool here for a long and tasty breakfast.
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Miramelindo
A spacious tavern in a Gothic building, this remains a classic on Passeig del Born for mixed drinks, while soft jazz and soul sounds float overhead. Try for a comfy seat at a table towards the back before it fills to bursting. Several similarly barn-sized places line this side of the passeig.
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Shunka
Shunka is a cut above Barcelona's Oriental average. The presence of Japanese punters is reassuring, and the open-plan kitchen also inspires confidence - you can keep an eye on what they're doing with your tempura and sashimi.
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La Panxa Del Bisbe
With low lighting and a hip, young feel, the ‘Bishop’s Gut’ is a great place to indulge in some gourmet tapas, washed down with a fine wine, like the Albariño white from Galicia, for a surprisingly modest outlay.
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Xampany
Since 1981, this ‘Cathedral of Cava’ has been distributing bubbly to the local citizenry. It’s a veritable Aladdin’s cave of cava (Catalan version of champagne), with bottles of the stuff crammed high and into every possible chaotic corner of this dimly lit locale.
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Alicianet
Alicianet offers various levels of flamenco instruction. One-off classes cost €25 per hour, or you can enrol in courses (up to four hours a week, at €110 a month).
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Nu Sabates
A couple of modern-day Catalan cobblers have put together some original handmade leather shoes (and a handful of bags and other leather items) in their stylish locale.
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Metro
Metro attracts a casual gay crowd with its two dance floors, three bars and very dark room. Keep an eye out for shows and parties, which can range from parades of models to bingo nights (on Thursday nights, with sometimes-interesting prizes). On Wednesday nights there’s a live sex show.
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International House
Intensive courses from around €410 for two weeks. Staff can also organise accommodation.
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Terra Diversions
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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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Barcelona Hop-on Hop Off Tour: East to West Route
Varies (Departs Barcelona, Spain)
by Viator
See Barcelona at your own pace on a one-day or two-day hop-on hop-off tour. With two interconnected routes, this tour is the easiest way to get around Barcelona…Not LP reviewed
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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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