Description
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 Olympics.
The Rambla de Mar is the way in. This walkway, with a swing bridge that opens to let boats through, leads from La Rambla across the water to the Maremàgnum, a mall with shops, restaurants and bars, and on to the yachts moored in the marina.
The aquarium is Europe's largest, with 22 basins holding some 8,000 fish and 11 sharks. There is also an IMAX cinema. Some 16 million people visit the complex each year.
Don't miss the cable car across the harbor from the Torre Jaume I, planned for the 1929 Exposition and opened in 1931. It gives a sweeping view of the port, the beach of Barceloneta and Montjuïc. The harbor keeps growing past Montjuïc toward the Llobregat delta, but Port Vell is where the city meets the water.
Port Vell has a hard past. For centuries Barcelona was a great sea power of the Mediterranean without a real port. Ships anchored off the beach, exposed to storms, and shipwrecks were common. Building a harbor was the problem: the sea kept burying every work in sand.
The first successful attempt began in 1477, with a dock out to a sandy islet. It worked, after a fashion: so much sand piled up that a whole new neighborhood, Barceloneta, was later built on top. In 1743 the sand won again, closing the port and trapping the ships inside.
The struggle went on until the late 19th century. Then the big ships moved farther south, and the old harbor became a run-down strip of empty warehouses, railway yards and factories. The 1992 Olympics changed everything.
The Rambla de Mar is the way in. This walkway, with a swing bridge that opens to let boats through, leads from La Rambla across the water to the Maremàgnum, a mall with shops, restaurants and bars, and on to the yachts moored in the marina.
The aquarium is Europe's largest, with 22 basins holding some 8,000 fish and 11 sharks. There is also an IMAX cinema. Some 16 million people visit the complex each year.
Don't miss the cable car across the harbor from the Torre Jaume I, planned for the 1929 Exposition and opened in 1931. It gives a sweeping view of the port, the beach of Barceloneta and Montjuïc. The harbor keeps growing past Montjuïc toward the Llobregat delta, but Port Vell is where the city meets the water.
Port Vell has a hard past. For centuries Barcelona was a great sea power of the Mediterranean without a real port. Ships anchored off the beach, exposed to storms, and shipwrecks were common. Building a harbor was the problem: the sea kept burying every work in sand.
The first successful attempt began in 1477, with a dock out to a sandy islet. It worked, after a fashion: so much sand piled up that a whole new neighborhood, Barceloneta, was later built on top. In 1743 the sand won again, closing the port and trapping the ships inside.
The struggle went on until the late 19th century. Then the big ships moved farther south, and the old harbor became a run-down strip of empty warehouses, railway yards and factories. The 1992 Olympics changed everything.