Barcelona Travel Guide

Barcelona is a city of two great pleasures — the sea and the imagination of Antoni Gaudí — and it lets you have both in a single day. The architect's work is everywhere and unlike anywhere: the still-rising Sagrada Família, a forest of stone turned to light inside; the mosaic dragons and undulating benches of Park Güell; the bone-like balconies of Casa Batlló on the elegant Passeig de Gràcia. Around them the city stretches from the medieval maze of the Gothic Quarter to the grid of the Eixample.

Then there's the Mediterranean itself, a short walk from the centre at Barceloneta, and a food culture — vermouth hour, pintxos bars, the cathedral of produce that is La Boqueria market — that turns eating into a daily event. Catalan, confident, and creative, with the green hill of Montjuïc on one side and the beach on the other, Barcelona is one of Europe's most complete city breaks.