Barcelona

The Mediterranean Sea nudges the coast of the city of Barcelona, while the Collserola ridge (part of the Serralada Litoral) borders the west of the city, with pine and oak woodland, fields and meadows, as well as wetland vegetation.
The Catalan capital, 166 kilometers from the French border and 120 kilometers south of the Pyrenees, is on a plain bordered by two rivers: the Llobregat in the south and the Besòs in the north.
Barcelona, in the area closest to the Serralada Litoral, is dotted with small hills (Monterols, Putget, Carmel, Rovira and Peira), and was once full of streams and small marshes. The promontory of Montjuïc is also by the coast, rising to a height of 191.7 meters.
Barcelona has a surface area of 100.4 square kilometers, forming part of the Barcelonès County, along with Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Badalona and Sant Adrià to the north, and Hospitalet de Llobregat along the southern border of the city.
The climate in Barcelona is typically Mediterranean. Summers are hot and humid, winters mild, and most of the rainfall is in spring and autumn.

A few city highlights:

Passeig de Gràcia

In addition to being a street that preserves almost entirely its original characteristics, it has had, like no other thoroughfare, a capacity to assimilate the traces of the many and varied events that have taken place here during the different periods of its history.

Passeig de Gràcia was, at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, the residential centre of the highest ranks of the Catalan bourgeoisie. Few of their houses had shops on the ground floor in those days, but since 1925 many of these buildings have been transformed and now have commercial establishments at street level.

This boulevard follows the straight line traced by the old road from Barcelona to the village of Gràcia, which has long been absorbed by the expansion of the city. In 1827 this road was converted into a broad, tree-lined avenue. Unlike today, the central part was for the use of pedestrians. In 1853 gas lighting was installed. In 1848 an Italian landscape gardener planted along the edges a series of gardens which he called Tívoli, a name which is still conserved by the theatre in Carrer de Casp.

The modernist movement left ample testimony in Passeig de Gràcia, in buildings such as the Lleó Morera mansion , de Domènech i Montaner, the Batlló house, by Antoni Gaudí, and the Milà mansion, also by Gaudí. The section between the streets Consell de Cent and Aragó is notable for the contrast between the buildings by Enric Sagnier, in a modernized Louis XV style, and the neo-Gothic Amatller mansion,by Josep Puig i Cadafalch. This variation of styles has popularized this part of the street with the name l’illa de la discòrdia.

Rambla Catalunya

Rambla de Catalunya, which is 30 meters wide and runs from the Diagonal to Plaça de Catalunya, has conserved the elegance of its tree-lined central passage. At its crossroads with Gran Via we find a small illuminated fountain, with four putti figures riding dolphins.

And we must not overlook two monuments located at the beginning and end of the street: a bull and a giraffe, called Meditació and Coqueta, respectively, made by Josep Granyer in 1972. The installation of these figures was sponsored by the residents of Rambla de Catalunya. This thirty-meter-wide avenue that begins at the Diagonal and ends at Plaça de Catalunya has conserved the charm of its central tree-lined promenade.

Plaça Sant Jaume

The Plaça de Sant Jaume (St. James’ Square) joins, via the streets Jaume I and Ferran, two avenues as important as the Via Laietana and the Rambla. Due to its situation in the heart of the city, it has a historical past that stems from Roman times. It was originally the crossroads of the two thoroughfares (Decumanus and Cardo Maximus) which crossed the city from north to south (now the streets Llibreteria and Call) and from west to east (now the streets Bisbe, Ciutat and Regomir). The Plaça de Sant Jaume, flanked by the Palace of the Generalitat and the City Hall, adopted its present structure in 1840, and was inaugurated with the name of Plaça de la Constitució.

The Rambla

The Rambla is a street, and an experience, that remain in the memory.

The Rambla is a boulevard that is transformed with the hours of the day and of the night. Few streets have such a marked capacity for changing their appearance, the rhythm of their life and even their smells and colours, depending on the season of the year and the time of day.

The Plaça de la Sagrada Família has become a very important touristic and commercial nucleus. It is situated between two of the main streets of the Eixample: Carrer Mallorca and Carrer Provença. It owes its name to the Temple of the Holy Family , planned by Antoni Gaudí.

Plaza Espanya

The Plaça d’Espanya was urbanized in 1929, the year of the Universal Exhibition held in Barcelona. In the centre of the square is a large fountain designed by the architect Josep Maria Jujol, a collaborator of Antoni Gaudí, ornamented with sculptures in marble and bronze by Miquel Blay. The series of bare brick buildings are the work of Nicolau Maria Rubió i Tudurí, and served as a hotel during the Exhibition.
The reforms carried out in the succeeding years have gradually transformed the square, but it still retains the twin towers by Ramon Reventós that overlook the entrance to the Barcelona Trade Fair and to one of the ways to go up the mountain of Montjuïc, where you can visit the Acclimatisation Garden, the gardens named after Father Cinto Verdaguer , and Father Costa i Llobera , in addition to the one dedicated to the poet Joan Maragall. You can enjoy an extraordinary view of the whole city from many spots on the mountain.

Carrer Montcada

Beside the apse of the basilica of Santa Maria del Mar, to the right, is the Placeta de Montcada, which leads to the street of the same name.Few streets are capable of arousing in the heart of the people of Barcelona the same fascination for the past, due to its extraordinary wealth of artistic and historic treasures.
The street takes its name from the Montcada dynasty, who served the Counts of Barcelona for generations, finally becoming the leading power in the land in the mid- 11th century. The founding of the Monastery of Santes Creus marked the culminating moment of the family’s history. They occupied most of the key positions of the country, and in their period of greatest splendour, Guillem Ramon de Montcada was appointed regent to the young Alfons II.

The mansions of the Carrer de Montcada were built at different times, and currently house institutions such as Omnium Cultural, in the Palau Dalmases, and museums, such as the Picasso Museum which occupies the Aguilar, Castellet and Meca houses. The Cervelló mansion is now occupied by the Maeght art gallery.

Plaça de Catalunya

The Plaça de Catalunya is the centre of the city; it is the confluence of streets as important as Passeig de Gràcia , Rambla Catalunya , the Rambla and Portal de l’Àngel, all filled with multitudes of local people and visitors. This square has shops, cafeterias and banks, and is also a major centre of urban communications.
On 17th October 1986, thousands of people gathered in the square to hear the announcement name of the city that was to host the 1992 Olympic Games. The giant screen that was transmitting the nomination ceremony became the focal point of the historic moment of the proclamation of “la ville de… Barcelona” as the venue of the Games.

Plaça Reial

Just off the left-hand side of the Rambla , as you go down towards the harbor, after Carrer Ferran, there opens up the Plaça Reial, one of the spaces with most tradition and interest in the city, as a result of its configuration and the life that goes on there. Like many of the public spaces of the old town, the Plaça Reial occupies the site of a monastery, in this case of the Capuchin order. It was laid out in 1848 by the architect and town planner Francesc Daniel Molina.
This square, remodeled on several occasions, is now the meeting-point for a very mixed public, which finds here a space to sit and have a drink in the open air at the terraces cafés situated under the welcoming porches that so characterize it. In the centre of the square there is the ‘Three Graces’ fountain, with two lanterns designed by the young Antoni Gaudí.
Olympic Barcelona

A tour of the Olympic Village enables us to discover this new neighborhood of Barcelona, an extremely important part of the works of the Olympic program. We begin our walk at the Plaça dels Voluntaris, in front of which there stand the two towers which, with their original architecture, give the neighborhood its own character. One of the towers is the Hotel Arts, the work of the architects Bruce Graham and Frank O. Gehry, with 44 floors and 456 bedrooms; the other is the Mapfre Tower, designed by Iñigo Ortiz and Enrique de León, an office building with a commercial centre on the ground floor. These two towers have a height of 153.5 m and are the highest in Spain.

The Olympic Harbour , built for the 1992 Games, is an excellent global work by the architects Oriol Bohigas, Josep Martorell, David Mackay and Albert Puigdomènech and the engineer Joan Ramon de Clascà. It was a key element of the competitions held during the Games, which required this type of installation. Its capacity enables it to berth a considerable number of sports boats, and, in addition to being one of the most important areas of the new city facing the sea, it has a large number of restaurants, bars and other establishments.