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The Romans didn't much like Barcelona to begin with... but they should have stuck around. This second city of Spain is now Spain's hippest town. Summer gives way to periodic lapses in sanity with week-long fiesta fun. But year-round the city rocks - it's always on the biting edge of fashion, architecture, food, style, music and good times. The buildings, featuring the work of an eccentric genius named Gaudi, will blow you away. The art, with significant collections by Picasso and Miro, will make you clammy all over. The people, with their exuberance, their duende, their persistent egalitarianism and clamour for a separate identity, will fascinate you. Barcelona is onse of the most dynamic and exciting cities on the western Mediterranean seaboard, sedulously promoting itself as a European metropolis, a link between the sub-Pyrenean peninsula and the heartland of Western Europe. It is a city that is inconceivable until you get there, unbelievable while you walk its streets and unforgettable after you've gone.
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An eccentric recluse, Gaudi was the most celebrated practitioner of the Modernist style, whose innovative work threw all design rulebooks out of the window in his quest to get architecture to mirror the curves and intricacies of nature. In addition to those sights described in Sightseeing, further architectural highlights include Hospital de la Santa
Creu I Sant Pau and the Palau de la Musica Catalana, both designed by Gaudi's contemporary, Domenech i Montaner. Passeig de Gracia, the most stylish street in the city, is at the heart of the Eixample and intersects with the Diagonal – the city's main thoroughfare, at its northern end. The Montjuïc mountainside has successfully managed the transition from being the site of the 1992 Olympic Games to become a permanent tourist attraction, boasting the remaining Olympic installations, such noteworthy museums as FundacioJoan Miroand the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, as well as great views of the city. |
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There are many attractions that can be visited on your short breaks /city breaks to Barcelona. With many flights to Barcelona from the United kingdom, Barcelona makes an ideal destination for the tourist. This is better to buy a flight and hotel package. These often work out considerably cheaper than purchasing a flight and hotel separately, particularly when booking late. We do advise you to book your flights as soon as you know you're coming in order to get the best deal. Book online at our site for Iberia Flights and British airways. Please use Search to check online availability for all hotels in Barcelona.
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Barcelona is neatly framed by the Mediterranean to the east and the hills of Montjuïc and Tibidabo on two of its other flanks. The central section of the city that most tourists spend their time in is even more conveniently divided by La Rambla - the main artery of Barcelona life which tumbles from Placa de Catalunya southeast towards the Mediterranean and the recently reborn Port Vell (Old Port). |
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The atmospheric Barri Gotic (Gothic Quarter), the area to the right of La Rambla heading in the direction of Placa de Catalunya, is the charming heart of the old city. Placa de Catalunya divides the old town from the Eixample - a grid of streets laid out in the nineteenth century in which much of the city's finest modernist architecture is to be found. The most celebrated practitioner of the style was Antoní Gaudí, an eccentric recluse whose innovative work threw all design rulebooks out of the window in his quest to get architecture to mirror the curves and intricacies of nature. |
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Points of particular interest include Hospital de la Santa Creu I Sant Pau and the Palau de la Música Catalana both designed by Gaudí's contemporary, Domenech i Montaner. Passeig de Gracia, the most stylish street in the city, is at the heart of the Eixample and intersects with the Diagonal - the city's main thoroughfare at its northern end. The Montjuïc mountainside has successfully managed the transition from being the site of the 1992 Olympic Games to become a permanent tourist attraction, boasting the remaining Olympic installations, museums and great views of the city. |
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Barcelona is made up of three main zones. The old city (Ciutat Vella)
lies between Placa de Catalunya and the port and breaks down into the Rambla; the Barri Gotic (Gothic Quarter); the Barri de la Ribera (Waterfront Quarter); the Raval, or medieval "outskirts" west of the Rambla; and Barceloneta, the old fishing quarter. Above the old city is the grid-patterned expansion built after the city's third set of walls was torn down in 1860. Known as the Eixample ("Widening"), this area contains most of Barcelona's Moderniste architecture. Farther out are the former outlying towns of Gracia, Sarria, and Pedralbes, and looming up behind are Tibidabo and the Collserola hills. South of Barcelona proper lies the hill of Montjuïc, on which are several of the sights most worth seeing. Barcelona's main cross-town traffic arteries are the Diagonal (so called because it runs diagonal to the longitudinal line through the city) and the midtown speedways Carrer d'Aragó and Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, both cutting northeast-southwest through the heart of the city. Passeig de Gracia, which becomes Gran de Gracia above the Diagonal, runs all the way from Placa de Catalunya to Placa de Lesseps, but the main up and down streets, for motorists, are Balmes, Muntaner, Aribau, and Comtes d'Urgell. Because of general noise and air pollution, you should avoid walking these streets (with the possible exception of Passeig de Gracia, which is unavoidable because of its dense endowment of Moderniste architecture) and instead take the charming and leafy Rambla de Catalunya, which is the upper extension of the Rambla between Placa de Catalunya and the Diagonal. on the northeastern coast of the Iberian peninsula and the shores of the Mediterranean, Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain in both size and population. It is also the capital of Catalonia, 1 of the 17 Autonomous
Communities that make up Spain. |
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There are two official languages spoken in Barcelona: Catalan, generally spoken in all of Catalonia, and Castillian Spanish. The city of Barcelona has a population of 1.510.000, but this number spirals to more than 4.000.000 if the outlying areas are also included. |
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The capital of Catalonia is unequivocally a Mediterranean city, not only because of its geographic location but also and above all because of its history, tradition and cultural influences. The documented history of the city dates back to the founding of a Roman colony on its soil in the second century B.C. Modern Barcelona experienced spectacular growth and economic revival at the onset of industrialization during the second half of the 19th century. The 1888 World's Fair became a symbol of the capacity for hard work and the international outlook projected by the city. Culture and the arts flourished in Barcelona and in all of Catalonia; the splendor achieved by Catalonian modernism is one of the most patent displays. Barcelona, more than just a single city, is really a collection of multi-faceted and diverse cities. The visitor unfamiliar with its history might be surprised that such a modern and enterprising city preserves its historic Gothic center almost intact, or by the curious contrast between the maze of narrow streets and the grid-like layout of the Eixample, the urban planning "Enlargement" project of the end of the 19th century. |
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