A year-round welcome to Spain’s designer city
PAUL COLE looks at the wonders on offer in Spain’s most vibrant city
BARCELONA is Spain’s most modern city, blessed with a mild Mediterranean climate and a colourful array of cultural delights and natural beauty.
So it’s little wonder the Catalonian capital has become a year-round tourist destination.
Set on a plain rising gently from the sea to a range of wooded hills, it is also one of the Mediterranean’s busiest ports and a regular stop for cruise liners.
There’s a wide range of accommodation, while restaurants, bars and clubs are often packed, as you’d expect at the seaside in summer. You’ll find something for every taste from avant-garde fantasies to cheap tapas bars.
Barcelona regards its past with pride and boasts one of the greatest concentrations of Gothic architecture in Europe. Then, of course, there are surreal spectacles aplenty, spearheaded by Antoni Gaudi’s Sagrada Família church.
But don’t get the idea that this isn’t a go-ahead city. You’ll delight in designer stores, cutting edge clubs and a tour of Barcelona’s Nou Camp stadium.
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SAGRADA FAMÍLIA
Barcelona’s best-known landmark, Antoni Gaudi’s famous church is a work in progress, seeming to grow organically like some giant alien plant.
Five million tourists visit the Sagrada Família each year, more than half paying the entrance fee which helps fund the 1m a month construction work.
A ticket allows you to wander through the interior of the church, a marvellous forest of columns fashioned of porphyry, the only natural element capable of supporting the church’s projected great dome.
You also enjoy access to the museum in the basement, with displays on the history of the construction, original models for sculptural work and the chance to watch sculptors working on plaster-cast models.
PARK GÜELL
Just try to resist falling under Park Guell’s magical spell. With its enchanting gingerbread houses, ceramic- clad lizard, curvy mosaic bench and panoramic views, this is one of the world’s most delightful public spaces.
It’s thanks to Gaudi again. His brief was to emulate the English garden cities admired by his patron Eusebi Güell, to lay out a self-contained suburb for the wealthy but also to design the public areas.
The park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is unmissable with twisted stone columns supporting curving colonnades or merging with the natural structure of the hillside.
At the peak is a large cross, and a breathtaking panorama of Barcelona and the sea beyond.
THE NOU CAMP
No CLUB has achieved what Barcelona managed in 2009: six tournaments, six trophies. And they’ve kept up the standard since.
Camp Nou, where FC Barcelona has played since 1957, is one of football’s great stadiums – a vast cauldron of a ground that holds 98,000 spectators.
If you can’t get there on matchday ( you can usually pick up tickets if you try) it’s worth visiting the club museum.
An excellent guided tour of the stadium takes you through the players’ tunnel to the dugouts and then, via the away team’s changing room, on to the President’s box, where there is a replica of the European Cup.
The museum makes much of the days when the likes of Cruyff, Maradona, Koeman and Lineker trod the hallowed turf, with pictures, video clips and souvenirs spanning the century since Swiss businessman Johan Gamper and Englishman Arthur Witty founded the club.
COSMOCAIXA
Another one for the kids – and the grown-ups, too!
The city’s interactive science and nature museum offers all manner of push button fun.
There’s an Amazonian rainforest inside, an aquarium and much more. Little wonder the place cost 100m
It’s your chance to explore physical, technical, geological, chemical and mathematical questions all by yourself in hundreds of experiments. And I guarantee you that it’s nothing like school.
WALKING TOUR
Take a walking tour of the city – or you can do it on a Segway if you’re feeling adventurous.
It’s worth the money to get a real insight into what makes Barcelona so special.
There’s no shortage of specialist tours to choose from – the Spanish Civil War Tour is a favourite of Tripadvisor users – whether your interest is history, arts and culture or food and drink.
If you’re travelling with the kids, then Runner Bean tours go out of their way to be child- friendly, with quizzes, singalongs, drawing and colouring.