Barcelona is the fifth most visited city in Europe (after London, Paris, Rome, and Istanbul). I’ve spent the past six days learning why. Here are my stories about the things I’ve seen and done.
I started to write this post at a halfway point in my time here, but I have decided to make it one long post to cover my entire visit. So if it turns out to be a long post, you can feel free to skim or just look at my photos.
Photos
It was really hard to refrain from taking a lot of photos. I’ve organized them into a few separate albums, but it has been a monumental task, and there are still a lot of photos in each album.
- Museums (Picasso, Miró, Tàpies, White Rabbit, Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya)
- Sagrada Familia
- Barcelona (general stuff, excluding what’s in the other albums)
Weather
I’ve had so much good weather on this trip so far. But I guess my luck was bound to change. Thursday, the day I arrived, it was cloudy. It rained pretty steadily all day Friday. Saturday was beautiful, as was Sunday morning, but rain came back in the afternoon. Monday and Tuesday were also nice, but today, Wednesday, is rainy and windy.
It’s also been chilly. I don’t know if this is typical for Barcelona for the middle of March, but it’s been barely above 50o F (10o C) since I got here. And mornings are particularly cold. I much prefer this to the alternative, but I am surprised that it hasn’t been warmer.
Food
Adapting to the Barcelona meal schedule was difficult for me. Ariana, the guide for the food tour I took on Friday explained it, and I tried adjusting to it, but it was a challenge.
Here’s the typical Barcelona day with food:
- First breakfast: a coffee and a pastry early in the morning
- Second breakfast: soup, a sandwich, or some salad with a beer or wine or cava (the local equivalent to champagne), around 10 or 11 am.
- Lunch: the main meal of the day, consisting of an appetizer, a main course, and a dessert. This is between 2 and 4 pm, and is followed by siesta. Many restaurants are closed between 4pm and 8pm.
- Tapas: Because it’s a long time between lunch and dinner, people go out for tapas when they get off work. Even though tapas was invented in southern Spain, it’s popular in Barcelona too.
- Dinner: a light meal eaten between 9:30 and 11 pm.
Geography
Northern Spain on the southern coast
I have never been anywhere that I felt so discombobulated as I do here. Let’s start with the fact that, although I’m on the Mediterranean coast, this is considered northern Spain. For some reason, I want to think of the part of Spain that runs along the Atlantic Ocean, starting at the French border and heading west as “northern Spain.” I just can’t wrap my brain about the border between Spain and France running more east-west than north-south. I feel like the Mediterranean should be the southern coast, and the Atlantic should be the northern.
But that’s not the worst of it.
The Grid
Barcelona’s street layout is largely built on a grid. This should make it very easy to navigate. But no.
So this aerial photograph is completely inaccurate. North is not at the top. It’s also not at the sides or at the bottom. North is toward the lower left corner. If you put north at the top, you’d see that the grid is on a diagonal, with the streets running from northeast to southwest and northwest to southeast.
When I’m walking on a grid, I expect to be walking north-south or east-west. So when I’m walking on this grid, I’m never sure what direction I’m going.
My apartment where I’m staying happens to be on a street called Avinguda (or Avenida) Diagonal. You can probably tell which street on the grid is Avinguda Diagonal. But if the grid is on a 45o angle, you would think the Diagonal would go either north-south or east-west.
But no! The Diagonal cuts across two blocks one way for every one block the other way.
I’ve been walking through these streets for six days and I still get disoriented. It doesn’t help that the blocks are completely square. I’m used to cities where you have short blocks in one direction and longer blocks in the other. But no matter which way you walk in Barcelona, the blocks are the same length.
Octagonal Intersections
To make things even more fun, notice that the grid intersections form octagons. This is a lovely feature. It gives the buildings at the corners a great open view.
Here’s an example of one of those corner buildings.
When you’re walking, this has another effect.
The other day I visited Casa Battló, one of Antoni Gaudí’s famous houses, in the morning. Here’s the map showing where I’m staying (the blue dot), and where the house is.
Looks pretty much like a straight shot. Right?
Wrong.
Here’s a detail from the walking directions from Google Maps.
At every intersection, you have to detour to the crosswalks and wait for the lights.
It’s really fun if I’m heading somewhere that isn’t a straight shot. Imagine the fun I had on Saturday walking to the Palau del la Música Catalana, where I went to see Verdi’s Nabucco.
Where should I zig? And where should I zag? Where should I cross the street? If the light is green, I cross now; otherwise, I go one more block. Imagine how many times Google Maps had to recalculate the directions. And how many alternatives they would give me with approximately the same travel time.
All that said, the architecture of Barcelona is so incredible, whatever route I travel is a visual delight.
So let me give a quick rundown of what I’ve done in my time in Barcelona.
Thursday
I arrived by bus from Valencia. The bus ride was okay, but in the last half hour the woman sitting next to me got a phone call with what was clearly very upsetting news. She was weeping and crying and moaning, “O mi madre!” and “O Dio mio.” It was very dramatic, and I felt bad for her, but I didn’t want to intrude or get involved in her drama, whatever it was.
Eixample Walking Tour
On Thursday afternoon I headed out on a walking tour of the Eixample neighborhood using Rick Steves’ Audio Europe. “Eixample” is the Catalan word for “expansion” or “extension.” This neighborhood sprang up in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries because the city was badly overcrowded.
The grid pattern I described was designed by Ildefons Cerdà, who is considered the founder of modern urban planning. His octagonal blocks provided greater visibility, better ventilation, and a place for horse-drawn carriages and wagons to turn around. Cerdà had planned a second diagonal street. Maybe if they hadn’t ignored that part of his plan, I’d have gotten a straight shot to the Palau de la Música…
In any case, the walk was awesome, and my phone’s camera got a great workout. The highlights were the many houses by Modernista architects like Gaudí and many of his contemporaries who, while not as well-known, contributed in much greater numbers to the beauty of the Eixample. They include include Josep Puig i Cadafalch, Josep Domènech i Estapà, Josep Vilaseca i Casanovas and Enric Sagnier i Villavecchia, together responsible for a total of over 500 buildings in the Eixample and other parts of Barcelona. (On the audio tour, Rick kept making jokes about how he would butcher all their names.)
Casa Lleó Morera, the house on the corner, designed by Lluís Domènech i Montaner, dates from the first decade of the 20th century.
Casa Mulleras (the yellow house to the right), remodelled by Enric Sagnier between 1906 and 1911.
Lots more from my Eixample walk in my photo album.
Friday
Ultimate Barcelona Food & Market Tour of El Born with Paella Lunch
On Friday morning I had an excellent food tour in the rain. We hit four places in Mercat Santa Caterina, had amazing bread and a filled croissant that was one of the best things I’ve ever eaten at Brunells, the oldest bakery in Barcelona, and a few other stops, ending with a paella lunch. Since I never got around to having paella in Valencia (where authentic paella really comes from), I was glad to have it here. But to be honest, I prefer fried rice from a halfway decent Chinese restaurant.
Picasso Museum
Since it was raining, I decided to save more outdoor walking until another day. So I headed to the Picasso Museum.
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) was born in Málaga, Andalusia, in southern Spain. He showed a passion and skill for drawing from a very early age. The family moved to Barcelona in 1895. Until the age of 23 Picasso spent most of his time in Barcelona. In 1905 he settled in Paris, and he spent most of his adult life in France.
The museum is particularly strong on Picasso’s early work. I found it interesting to see these youthful works and how his style changed. But I also found it frustrating that a big chunk of his life’s work isn’t there. I’ve seen much of his greatest works elsewhere, so it’s not fair to complain about that. I’m just saying that it’s not completely satisfying to visit a museum devoted almost entirely to the work of one artist and not experience his complete oeuvre.
It is said Picasso painted this portrait of his aunt in less than a day.
This pub opened in 1896 and is still open today. Picasso and other members of the modernism movement hung out here. This is where Picasso exhibited his first one-man show.
Five years before his first real Cubist painting, still in his Blue Period
Jaume was Picasso’s personal assistant.
Las Meninas
Probably the most significant works in this museum are his series based on Velázquez’s masterpiece Las Meninas. The 17th-century original is in Madrid’s Prado Museum, which I plan to visit in May, at the end of my trip. It is generally listed among the greatest paintings of all time.
These works were, for me, the highlight of the museum.
There was also an interesting exhibit of works from Montmartre artists who were contemporaries of Picasso’s. Check them out in the museums photo album.
Saturday
Gothic Quarter
Since it was a beautiful day, I did a lot of walking. I started with another Rick Steves audio tour, this one of a more historic nature, into some of the oldest parts of the city.
I actually walked only a very small section of this famous street. It was just too crowded with tourists and with shops that only appeal to tourists.
Although the current structure dates from the 1300s, the facade is from the 1800s; it is neo-Gothic. And the tall spire wasn’t added until 1913.
Miró
Then, since it was still a beautiful day, I walked all the way to Montjuic, about an hour, with a lot of uphill steps at the end, to visit the Fundació Joan Miró.
Joan Miró was born in Barcelona in 1893. He died in 1983. He himself founded this museum in 1975, primarily with works from his own collection.
I can’t say I love or understand Miró. But the collection at this museum blew me away. What I can say is his work truly fascinates me. I don’t begin to comprehend what kind of a mind it takes to produce art like this, and that’s part of the fascination.
You certainly get no clue from his early works of how his art will evolve.
The title of the work comes from a remark made by Rembrandt that fascinated Miró: “Rubies and diamonds are to be found in dung heaps.”
In 1974 the Franco regime executed the activist Salvador Puig Antich.
A set of lines that traverse the white space around a dot of pure colour, describing a line that is like a heartbeat, which never becomes complete, with the hope – right up to the very last moment – that Salvador Puig Antich would be pardoned.
Lunch
On the walk back I passed the Merkat Sant Antoni, and I decided to stop in for lunch. Every neighborhood in Barcelona has a market; there are a total of 39 across the city. Some are just stalls with fresh produce, meat, cheese, bread, olives, and other foods. Some have cafés, bars, and restaurants. And some sell other goods, like clothes, jewelry, flowers, and accessories for the home.
Since it was about 3pm, I should have had a big, three-course lunch. But I didn’t. I just had a plate of artichokes with jamón iberico and a glass of wine.
Tàpies
And then I stopped at another museum, Fundació Antoni Tàpies. I had passed the museum on my first afternoon and was intrigued by the exterior.
In addition to work by Tàpies, there was an exhibit by a Spanish/Mexican artist named Marta Palau (1934–2022).
By comparison, the work of Tàpies, a Catalan artist, is far more conventional.
After all the walking, using my phone for directions and as a camera, it ran out of juice after I left the museum. As I mentioned, I was not good and figuring out my way around Barcelona, and I had to guess which way to walk back to my apartment. I was prepared to ask for directions. But I guessed right.
Opera
My long day wasn over yet. This was my night for Verdi’s Nabucco at the Palau de la Música Catalana. I expected this to be a concert performance, but it was semi-staged, with the singers in costume moving around in front of the orchestra. It was a wonderful performance. I was surprised and disappointed, though, that the supertitles were in Catalan. No Spanish, no English. Anywhere else in Europe where I’ve gone to the opera (Germany and Poland), supertitles were in multiple languages, including English.
But the real star of the show was the Palau itself, which opened in 1908. What an extraordinary venue! The stained glass windows, the brilliant mosaic skylight, and the sculptures surrounding the stage all made it feel like I was transported back a hundred years. Of course I’ve been in older music venues, but none of them call attention to themselves the way the Palau does.
Sunday
I had a light day on Sunday. I started out at another museum. Actually, the museum I went to, the White Rabbit, calls itself an “Off-Museum.” I have no idea how to describe it, other than to say it is nothing like any other museum I’ve ever been to. Each room provides an interactive experience related to the culture of Barcelona or Catalunya.
As they found out in the 17th century, putting on a big head means becoming someone else and dancing down the street as if you were a king, a bishop, or a devil. Although times have changed, the capgrossos are still protagonists in local festivals. We also offer you some of our own, which represent part of the cultural diversity of Barcelona.
Since the 1940s, Catalans have modified this tradition a good deal. Other characters, such as nuns, devils, Santa Claus, celebrities, royalty, and other famous people of the past and present have been depicted as caganers.
I was planning on visiting a few other museums, but I stopped for lunch (tapas), and when I was done it had started raining, so I decided to call it a day. I went back and relaxed in the apartment.
Monday
Antoni Gaudí
This morning I had a tour of Gaudí sites booked with Walks.
Casa Batlló
In 1903 Josep Batlló, an industrialist who owned several textile factories, bought an 1875 house at this location. He originally planned to demolish it and build a new house, but ended up hiring Gaudí to remodel it. By that time Gaudí was an architect of some renown; Sagrada Familia had been under construction for 20 years already. The work took two years.
Parc Güell
In 1900 Eusebi Güell, a local entrepreneur and industrialist, bought land on a hill adjacent to the city of Barcelona and employed his friend Antoni Gaudí to build a housing complex for the rich. There was a plan to build 60 houses, but only two were ever built. The project failed by 1914 because the area was considered to be remote and uphill, without any streetcar access.
In 1923 the Güell family gave the land to the city, and it opened as Parc Güell in 1926. Some of the park land was already developed by Gaudí, with stairways, plazas, terraces, and gardens. Today non-residents of Barcelona must pay a fee to enter.
Sagrada Familia
Construction of the Basilica i Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família began in 1882 under architect Francisco de Paula del Villar. His plan was for a Gothic revival church. Villar resigned in 1883, and Gaudí took over as chief architect, changing the design radically. His plan was for three facades, one at the base of the nave and the other two at the ends of transept. The three facades represent three phases in the life of Jesus: the Nativity, the Passion, and the Resurrection or Glory.
When Gaudí died in 1926, construction was less than 25% complete. Only the facade on the east side, the Nativity facade, was complete. Today the Glory facade is also complete, but the Passion facade, on the south side, which will be the main entrance, is yet to be constructed.
During the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, work on the basilica was interrupted, and Gaudí’s models and workshop were destroyed. The present design is based on reconstructed versions of the plans as well as modern adaptations.
From a distance (for example, the view of the top that I could see from my Airbnb), the two most striking things about Sagrada Familia are the cranes and the topless steeple that looks like a smokestack.
The effect isn’t improved when viewing the entire structure from close-up. Not only is there a lot of construction equipment, but some of the older sections are under renovation and repair and so are wrapped in some kind of scaffolding.
It’s only when I got close enough to see all the intricate details that the exterior wowed me.
Nativity facade
It’s hard to know where to focus when standing in front of this enormous work of art. I wanted to take it all in and make some narrative sense out of the whole thing, but I was drawn to so many of the individual pieces. To me it works best that way: not as a big facade, but as a collection of sculptures all based on a theme.
Glory facade
What is so striking about the west side of the basilica is how unlike the east side it is. It is so obviously the work of different artists with very different aesthetic ideas. The concept is the same — telling a story with a grandiose structure — and again, the details, for me, are more interesting than the overall effect. The art is sparser here: it’s not saturated with images the way the other facade is. Much of what I saw on this side just looks structural. There was clearly no interest in evoking the spirit or style of Gaudí here.
The interior
The interior of Sagrada Familia is essentially complete, and it really packs a punch. The two things that immediately knocked my socks off were the stained glass and the soaring tree-like columns.
The Sagrada Familia Foundation says work will be completed in 2026, the hundredth anniversary of Gaudí’s death. I (and a lot of other people I spoke to in Barcelona) are doubtful.
Incidentally, the funding of the basilica is all through private fundraising and tourists buying tickets to enter. It currently costs 40 euros to visit Sagrada Familia.
Barcelona Cathedral
On Monday afternoon I was ready for a different aesthetic. I visited the Cathedral.
Construction of the Cathedral began in 1298 and finished in the mid-15th century. As I already mentioned, the facade is much newer, dating from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The interior is pure Catalan Gothic.
Another food tour
I ended this day with another food tour: Barcelona Tapas, Taverns & History Tour. A lot of what our guide talked about was stuff I already learned on the first food tour, but the food was great, and it was fun walking around the Gothic Quarter at night.
Tuesday
I planned on Tuesday being a museum day. What I didn’t plan on was spending it all at one museum.
But I started the day with a haircut.
Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya
The museum that filled my entire afternoon on Tuesday was the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya. I just couldn’t tear myself away.
It’s not even that big a museum. The collection is essentially in four parts: Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque, and Modern.
Romanesque
I didn’t anticipate being thrilled by Romanesque art, but I loved how it evoked and recreated the 11th and 12th century churches and monasteries where it originated. And I couldn’t believe how rich and vibrant some of the colors were after a thousand years.
Gothic
What impressed me most as I moved from the Romanesque wing to the Gothic wing was how much artistic styles and techniques changed in just about fifty years. The Gothic collection dates from the second half of the 13th century through the 14th and early 15th centuries. There’s much more realism, though we’re still a far way from truly lifelike painting.
(1443–45)
The five consellers (councillors) of the Town Hall of Barcelona who appear in it, kneeling before the Virgin and infant, commissioned the painting for a chapel in the Barcelona town hall. They are depicted true to life, and they are the same size as the Virgin and the saints, a modern approach for the time. Typically civil figures were depicted smaller than religious ones.
Behind the onlookers peering through the windows, you can see the cityscape of medieval Barcelona.
Renaissance and Baroque
I may have blurred the line between Gothic and Renaissance, but that’s because the museum does so. The collection seems to transition smoothly.
Not all the art is by Catalan or Spanish artists, though a lot is. And many of these are artists I’ve only just encountered for the first time on this trip. Of course there are a lot of well-known Spanish painters, but there are also many Catalan artists who were famous and prolific but are largely forgotten. I’m happy to have learned about them.
El Greco depicts Christ bearing his cross not as an instrument of martyrdom, but as a symbol of his triumph over death. His face does not show the pain of his wounds. It expresses serenity.
The adoration of Christ (c. 1602)
The painter brings together in the same composition a religious and and earthly scene in two different styles. The members of the family of the Marquis and Marchioness of Ayala are depicted with great precision and attention to detail. In the background, the religious figures are done with more fluency of brushstroke.
The family seems to be witnessing the adoration of the child, though they are looking out at us and don’t seem particularly interested in doing any adoration. There’s no humility in their stance or their expression.
Modern
Here’s where I spent the most time. And here’s where I encountered two of my new favorite artists from Catalunya: painters Santiago Rusiñol (1861–1931) and Ramon Casas (1866–1932), and sculptor Pablo Gargallo (1881–1934), some of whose work I already shared above from the Palau de la Música Catalana. I’m just going to share a couple of their works, because there are just too many. I only took pictures of the pieces I really loved. Honest. You will have to see the rest in my photo album.
This is one of the few known self-portraits by Rusiñol, thanks to the classic motif of the painter reflected in the mirror.
The womanś pose and hands recall “Whistler’s Mother,” which was surely an inspiration for Rusiñol’s painting.
Wednesday
My last day in Barcelona was rainy and blustery. I was going to try to get to the last few museums before my afternoon train to Girona, but I decided to stay in and stay warm. And work on this blog post, which I’m only now finishing on Thursday morning in Girona.
I’ll try to be less verbose when I write about Girona.
Gail Duree
Steve and I took a night motorcycle tour, which I HIGHLY recommend doing. Saw some of the same streets, but used it to go farther out. I think we started with an overview from the park. We are in the mountains and my book is at home so I am using the old memory and cannot remember the company name, but well worth it. Steve sat behind the driver and I was i the side seat The views at night are quite different. Of course, works if not raining!!