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Geography
The city of Barcelona is Cataluña's capital, and together with its suburbs, is Spain's second largest city with four million inhabitants. Auspiciously located on the Costa Dorada's Mediterranean shores, this exciting city flaunts its dual nature. Barcelona is at once a thoroughly modern, trendy metropolis which also reverently treasures its ancient heritage, and a stunningly beautiful city which also happens to be one of Spain's major commercial and industrial centers.

Modern Barcelona experienced spectacular economic revival during the upsurge of industrial growth in the second half of the nineteenth century. Since the end of the Franco era, thirty years ago, Barcelona has led the vanguard of Cataluña's avant garde forces in art, architecture, and cultural fashions. With buildings which belong in fairy tales... fantastical baroque decoration, facades which ooze and flow like molten lava... parts of Barcelona seem to have gone through the looking glass and never returned. In the early 1990's the city re-vamped its image in preparation for hosting the '92 Olympic Games and hasn't looked back. If you would like to see some wonderful Barcelona apartment rentals visit Barcelona Apartments - Barcelona By.Com
 
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Barcelona Palace

History & Heritage

With its roots planted by Carthaginians and its fortunes ebbing and flowing down through centuries of rule by Romans, Visigoths and Moors, by the fourteenth century Barcelona had become capital of a Catalan empire which included Malta, Sardinia, Valencia, the Balearic Islands and Sicily, as well as the French regions of Cerdagne and Rousillon, and parts of Greece.

By the fifteenth century, pressured by stiff competition from the Genovese and a population at home decimated by bank losses and the plague, the Catalan empire breathed its last and entered into an uneasy union with the kingdom of Castile. What followed was a long era of rebellions by disenfranchised Catalans, and retaliatory sieges which devastated Barcelona many times, the last during the war of Spanish Sucession. Barcelona fell to Philip V in 1714 and he promptly banned the Catalan language, thereby communicating his victory to the losers more succinctly than any act of war.

Spain's eighteenth century industrial revolution began with Barcelona's textile manufacturing and by the mid-nineteenth century the European Romantic movement led by poets, writers and artists, revived the Catalan language as part of a fervent nationalist quest to popularize the language of the people.

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Best Sights

The Gothic Quarter
In counterpoint to sparkling, new Modernista Barcelona, the old town rambles outward from the harbour. The heart of it is a maze of narrow winding streets known as the Barri Gòtic, or Gothic Quarter. Wander through the medieval core of the city where you will find evidence of a mix 'n match tangle of styles and cultures. Each in their day germinated into a different version of this great city. You can trace Barcelona's history from early Roman through medieval Romanesque to Gothic and beyond.

The Catedral de la Santa Creu has been through three incarnations on this site: there was a fourth century basilica and an eleventh century Romanesque church, before the present Gothic cathedral which dates from the fourteenth century.

The Museo d'Historia de la Ciutat, or City History Museum will take you back in time to Roman Barcelona... Barcino, as it was named in the first century BC. The excavated Roman ruins are, of course, on the lowest level in the basement, and you can follow Barcelona's development through sixth century Visigoth rule into medieval times.

The Picasso Museum houses the best collection of Picasso's early work in existence. Much of it done here when Picasso was young and still painting more realistically, the canvases show the artist's development through many stages, and pre-figure the masterful modernist style which made him famous.

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Plaza Reial

 
Las Ramblas
A highlight of any trip to Barcelona is a stroll along Las Ramblas. Stretching from the Plaza Cataluña to the Port, it is so much more than a pedestrian strip lined with cafes, shops and restaurants which passes through the medieval center of Barcelona. Las Ramblas is part street fair and part carnival where you can watch or mingle, as the mood strikes, with a host of musicians, dancers, performance artists and human statues.

Las Ramblas will take you past La Boquería... the produce market, the flower market, the bird market, the famous Museo de l'Eròtica as well as the Licieu Opera House and the elegant neo-classical Plaza Reial. As you approach the harbor you will see Barcelona's Monument to Columbus on its tall column, testament to the fact that a certain tenacious segment of the population are certain that Colom was a Catalan.
 

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La Pedrera

Commissioned in 1885 by Don Eusebi Güell, a wealthy textile industrialist and Antoni Gaudi’s patron, Palau Güell just off Las Ramblas, is one of the most luxurious buildings in Barcelona. The first modern building to be declared a UNESCO world heritage site, it is a fabulous invention of marble columns and arches, fairytale ceilings and chimney stacks adorned with mosaics.

Also worth a visit is Park Güell, conceived as an exclusive housing development for the wealthy scions of Barcelona, Gaudi died early on in the project and ultimately Güell let the plan evolve into a public park.
 
Cuisine & Culture

Barcelona cuisine covers the spectrum for every taste a palette... from traditional Catalan home cooking to the innovative creations of modern chefs. As always in big cities, seek out the places where the locals eat. The menu might include meats roasted over a wood fire served with unique sauces that blend onion, tomato and peppers with mint and hazelnuts.

Roast suckling pig or marinated leg of lamb rubbed with rosemary and thyme, served with good rustic bread rubbed with tomato and drizzled with fruity green olive oil and salt. For something a little more exotic, roast partridge with Iberian ham or a souffle of monkfish with shrimp. How about chicken with prunes and pignoli, or even pig's trotters with plums and truffles. Bacallà... salt cod, is a staple which practically every week appears in new and delicious ways. Order the Zarzuela... a rich seafood stew, cousin to Bouillabaisse and Cioppino. Be adventurous and Catalan cuisine will reward you.
 

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Gaudi's Casa Batllo

Antoni Gaudi
Famed architect Antoni Gaudi is credited with saying that only men draw straight lines; God and nature prefer curves. He took his inspiration from the natural world around him, indeed the weird and unusual rock formations of Montserrat bring to mind echoes of Gaudi. And so it is that all over Barcelona there stand curvaceous, carved tributes and cascading concrete testaments to one of the world's most gifted and unique artists.
 

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La Sagrada Familia
Visitor's to Barcelona flock to see Gaudi's extraordinary landmark of ornate spires, the Church of the Sagrada Familia, but can also be found with mouths a-gape at his Casa Mila, also known as La Pedrera (the stone quarry), and Casa Batllo... two of the most magical and disney-esque city buildings in the world.

Gaudi spent his final years living in a make-shift shack inside the Sagrada Familia, having sold everything he owned to finance its construction. He died, destitute, in a tram accident in 1926 and was not recognized as his tattered appearance belied his fame and reputation. The Sagrada Familia has never been completed. Whatever plans Gaudi had either died with him or were destroyed during the Spanish Civil War.

Amid ongoing controversy, artists and artisans have continued to work on it as and when they can, and all funding for the project is by donation and revenue from entry fees. Many believe that the shell of the unfinished Sagrada Familia should be left untouched, as no matter how talented, there is not likely to be another architect capable of expressing Gaudi's vision.
 

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