Sagrada Família is Barcelona's great basilica, designed by Antoni Gaudí and still being finished more than a century after he took it over: towers like stone honeycombs, façades crawling with carved plants and animals, and an interior like a...
Park Güell is a hillside park of viaducts that lean like tree trunks, mosaic-covered benches and fairy-tale gatehouses, in the La Salut neighborhood of Barcelona, above the city. Antoni Gaudí designed it between 1900 and 1914, and it is among his...
Casa Milà, known as La Pedrera, is the apartment building on Barcelona's Passeig de Gràcia whose wavy stone front looks like a cliff eaten away by the sea. It was the last private house Antoni Gaudí designed, built from 1906 to 1912, and UNESCO...
Casa Batlló is the house on Barcelona's Passeig de Gràcia that Antoni Gaudí turned, in 1904-06, into a dream of bones, scales and water: a rippling front of colored tiles, mask-like balconies and a roof like the back of a dragon. Locals call it...
La Rambla is Barcelona's most famous street: a tree-lined pedestrian boulevard 1.2 kilometers long that runs from Plaça de Catalunya down to the Columbus monument and the old port. Crowded from morning to late at night, it is full of kiosks,...
La Boqueria is Barcelona's most famous food market, opening off La Rambla a short walk from the Liceu opera house: more than 300 stalls under an iron roof, piled with fruit, vegetables, fish, meat and produce from far away.
Its full name...
The Gothic Quarter (Barri Gòtic) is the historic heart of Barcelona's old city, a labyrinth of narrow lanes and small squares between La Rambla, Via Laietana and the sea. It holds the cathedral, Roman walls, the old Jewish quarter and the seat of...
The Palau de la Música Catalana is Barcelona's great modernista concert hall, tucked into the narrow streets of the old town: a jewel box of mosaics, stained glass and sculpture, and still a working venue, where more than half a million people a...
Montjuïc is the broad hill that rises above Barcelona's harbor, southwest of the center: a patchwork of gardens, museums and Olympic venues, with a castle on top and the best views over the port. It is reached by funicular and cable...
La Ribera is the medieval waterfront quarter of Barcelona's old city, east of Via Laietana: narrow stone lanes, Gothic merchant palaces and, in its southern part, the busy bars and boutiques of El Born.
In the 13th to 15th centuries this...
The Museu Picasso is a museum of Pablo Picasso's early years, in five medieval palaces on Carrer de Montcada in La Ribera, Barcelona's old town. It holds 4,251 works, mostly from his youth, and it shows how a gifted schoolboy turned into...
Plaça de Catalunya is Barcelona's central square, a vast open space of about 50,000 square meters where the medieval old town meets the 19th-century grid of the Eixample. Four great streets meet here: La Rambla, Passeig de Gràcia, Rambla de...
La Barceloneta is the old fishermen's neighborhood of Barcelona, a triangle between the sea, the port and El Born, with narrow lanes that all lead to the city's liveliest beach. It is where locals go for a seafood lunch and a day on the...
Ciutadella Park is Barcelona's favorite park, 31 hectares of lawns, palms, a lake and monumental fountains on the northeastern edge of the old city. For decades after it opened it was the city's only green space. It was born from the city's most...
The Magic Fountain of Montjuïc is Barcelona's grand water-and-light show: a vast fountain at the foot of Montjuïc hill, below the Palau Nacional, where jets of water, colored lights and music perform on weekend evenings. It was built for the 1929...
Barcelona Cathedral, the Cathedral of the Holy Cross and Saint Eulalia, is the Gothic seat of the city's archbishop, in the heart of the Gothic Quarter. Spires and gargoyles crown its neo-Gothic front, and a palm-shaded cloister hides a flock of...
Camp Nou, "New Field" in Catalan, is the home stadium of FC Barcelona, in the Les Corts district. It opened in 1957 and has been the club's ground ever since, one of the great temples of football, with a museum devoted to the club.
It was...
The MNAC, the National Art Museum of Catalonia, fills the Palau Nacional, the huge domed palace on Montjuïc hill at the end of Avinguda de la Reina Maria Cristina. It is famous for its Romanesque church paintings, unmatched by any other museum,...
Passeig de Gràcia is the grand boulevard of Barcelona, running through the Eixample from Plaça de Catalunya up to Carrer Gran de Gràcia. It is the most expensive street in the city and in Spain, lined with luxury shops, grand hotels and some of...
At Palau Güell, the Güell family's mansion on Carrer Nou de la Rambla, the hosts had already looked their guests over before they reached the top of the stairs. Behind the ornate ceiling of the reception room, small hidden windows let the family...
The Museu Marítim, Barcelona's maritime museum, fills the Drassanes Reials, the royal shipyards in the Port Vell area by the old harbor. The setting is half the show: a vast Gothic hall of stone naves where warships were built for...
The Poble Espanyol, Spanish Village, is an open-air architectural museum on Barcelona's Montjuïc hill: 117 full-scale buildings copied from towns across Spain, set out as streets and squares in one small village. It houses artisans' workshops,...
The Museu Egipci de Barcelona is a private museum of ancient Egypt in the Eixample, on Carrer de València close to Passeig de Gràcia. More than a thousand objects, gathered by the hotelier Jordi Clos, fill two floors; a third hosts temporary...
The Science Museum (Museu de la Ciència), known since 2004 as CosmoCaixa, is Barcelona's hands-on science museum, run by the "la Caixa" foundation. Its exhibits explain nature by letting visitors touch, try and see.
The highlight is the...
Casa Amatller is a Modernista town house on Passeig de Gràcia, remodeled in 1898–1900 by Josep Puig i Cadafalch for the chocolate maker Antoni Amatller. It stands on the "Block of Discord" next to Gaudí's Casa Batlló, and it is easy to tell...
Ciutat Vella (Old City) is Barcelona's historic center, the city's District 1, squeezed into just over four square kilometers between the sea and the Eixample. Its narrow streets hold the city's Gothic churches, markets and best-known...
The Jardí Botànic, Barcelona's botanical garden, covers 14 hectares of steep hillside on Montjuïc, between the Olympic Stadium, the castle and the cemetery. It is devoted to plants from the world's regions with a Mediterranean climate.
The...
The Museu d'Història de la Ciutat, the Museum of the History of Barcelona (MUHBA), takes you beneath the Gothic Quarter to the Roman town of Barcino. Its main site is on Plaça del Rei, where walkways run over more than 4,000 square meters of...
The Columbus Monument is a 60-meter column topped by a bronze Christopher Columbus, at the foot of La Rambla beside Barcelona's port. An elevator inside the column climbs to a viewing platform just below the statue, with views over the harbor,...
The Fundació Joan Miró is the museum of Joan Miró's art, on the hill of Montjuïc in Barcelona: a bright white building with terraces and courtyards, packed with paintings, sculptures, drawings and tapestries by the Catalan master. Most of the...
Plaça Reial is a grand arcaded square in the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona, just off La Rambla: palm trees, yellow arcades, a fountain of the Three Graces and two lampposts by Gaudí. It looks like a picture of order in the tangle of the old...
CaixaForum is the cultural center of the "la Caixa" foundation at the foot of Montjuïc in Barcelona, set in a red-brick Modernista textile mill: come for the temporary art exhibitions, and stay for the building.
The Casaramona factory is...
Art gallery and bar
Miscelanea is a multi purpose cultural space, initially founded as a not-for-profit cultural association. The association discovers and promotes up-and-coming artists, both local and national.
An event venue,...
Port Vell, the Old Harbor, is Barcelona's waterfront at the foot of La Rambla: a wide promenade of docks and yachts, with a shopping and leisure complex, an aquarium and a cable car across the harbor. It was rebuilt before the 1992...
Antiques and art
Galería Miquel Alzueta is a favorite with collectors and antique dealers, and a must for connoisseurs. You will find unique items from the XIXth and XXth centuries, as well as rare designs by the likes of Le Corbusier...
For emerging photographers of note
The Kowasa Gallery is a combination art gallery, photographic gallery, and bookstore in the center of Barcelona. Permanent and rotating exhibitions, workshops, and sales both on and offline are a central...
Bookstore and art gallery
Mutt is hip, cool, and happening, a unique concept store, combining the best of art and literature. The bookstore itself boasts a rich collection specializing in contemporary literature, self editions,...
Casa Vicens is a small Modernista house in the Gràcia district of Barcelona, and the first major work of Antoni Gaudí. Striped with brick, stone and colorful tiles, it is a fantasy of turrets and Oriental details. It is a UNESCO World Heritage...
The Arc de Triomf is a triumphal arch in Barcelona with no victory to celebrate. It stands at the head of a wide tree-lined promenade, Passeig de Lluís Companys, that leads to Ciutadella Park, and it is built of red brick in a Moorish-flavored...
Santa Maria del Mar, "Saint Mary of the Sea", is a Gothic church in the Ribera district of Barcelona's old town, a short walk from the Born. Built between 1329 and 1383, it is Catalan Gothic at its purest, with a calm, airy interior.
In...