Barcelona City

Montjuïc Hill has borne witness to, and been the focus of key events that have shaped its personality. The first such event was the 1929 International Exhibition held in Barcelona which fostered the development of the zone.

Montjuïc is also home to museums, such as the Fundacio Joan Miro, the Museu d’Arqueologia, the Museu Etnològic and the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, MNAC. The latter, which is housed in the Palau Nacional, the centrepiece of the 1929 exhibition, invites us to discover 1,000 years of Catalan art. The Pavelló Mies van der Rohe, which was the German pavilion at the event, is a superb example of Bauhaus architecture. The former Casaramona textile factory, a modernista landmark by Puig i Cadafalch, is now home to Caixaforum, a cultural centre which hosts temporary exhibitions. The Magic Fountain and the Poble Espanyol, with its “artisans’ village”, are other places of interest in Barcelona which are a must-see.

The Olympic Ring, the main site of the Olympic Games, features the stadium, the Estadi Lluís Companys, the Palau Sant Jordi, and the telecommunications tower designed by Santiago Calatrava. Nearby, the Museu Olímpic i de l'Esport and the Botanical Gardens are also unmissable sights as you explore the Parc de Montjuïc.

Sants is a neighbourhood with a clear identity, a consequence of its historical origins: it was an independent village until 1897, when it became part of Barcelona. Barcelona Sants (also known as Estació de Sants) is the name of the main railway station in Barcelona. And tucked away behind its shopping streets is a maze of narrow streets with a true village feel, which you are bound to be surprised by. The Parc de l’Espanya Industrial, located on the site of a textile mill, and the local markets of Sants and Hostafrancs, are other essential places to visit in the neighbourhood.

The neighbourhood of Poble-sec in Barcelona stretches from the foot of Montjuïc to the Avinguda Paral•lel, close to the sea. The close-knit community and long-standing theatrical tradition are two of the distinctive features of this part of Barcelona, which retains one of the air-raid shelters built by the local residents during the Spanish Civil War. It could be said that the neighbourhood of Poble-sec was the first city expansion, carried out before Ildefons Cerdà’s Eixample district. People first came to live here in the middle of the 19th century beyond the old walled city. A stretch of the medieval wall attached to the Gothic shipyards, the Reials Drassanes, can still be seen today at the end of the Avinguda Paral•lel. Not far from here, the air-raid shelter, Refugi 307, illustrates how the civilian population lived during wartime.

This is a close-knit community in Barcelona with a long-standing tradition in the world of entertainment, theatre and cabaret. It reached the height of its fame in the 1950s when the music hall artistes on the Paral•lel were the queens of irreverent humour. It was also the birthplace of such illustrious figures as the singer-songwriter Joan Manuel Serrat, hence his nickname "the boy from Poble-sec".

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