Barcelona

About

Barcelona is the capital of Catalonia and the second-largest city of Spain after Madrid, with about 1.7 million residents in the municipality and roughly 5.7 million in the metropolitan area, making it one of the larger metropolitan regions on the Mediterranean. It lies on the coast between the mouths of the Llobregat and Besòs rivers and is bounded inland by the Collserola ridge. The city has Roman foundations as Barcino and grew under medieval Catalan rule and the Crown of Aragon. The 19th century brought industrialization, the Cerdà plan, and the Eixample expansion, and the long arc of Catalan Modernisme in architecture, music, and the arts. Catalan and Spanish are co-official, and Catalan is the working language of much of public life. Barcelona hosted the 1992 Summer Olympics and remains one of the principal Mediterranean ports, cultural centers, and tourist destinations of southern Europe.

Summary excerpted from the Wikipedia article Barcelona, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Text may be clipped or paraphrased to fit this page.

Why visit

Go to Barcelona for architecture, Catalan culture, visual art, literature, food, live performance, and the pleasure of moving between city, hill, and sea. It is not just a Gaudí checklist. The Sagrada Família is a working basilica and a construction project where light, structure, and religious symbolism do real architectural work. Casa Batlló, La Pedrera, the Palau de la Música Catalana, and the Hospital de Sant Pau show how Modernisme spread across homes, hospitals, concert halls, and civic life. The museum landscape is strong and varied. On Montjuïc, the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya is especially useful for Romanesque church painting, which helps explain medieval religious space in Catalonia. The Fundació Joan Miró connects modern art to terraces, courtyards, and views over the port. The Picasso Museum is best understood as a museum of the young Picasso and his Barcelona formation, not as a full summary of his later career. Barcelona is also a literary city. Mercè Rodoreda's La plaça del Diamant gives Gràcia a domestic and political memory shaped by the Spanish Civil War. Manuel Vázquez Montalbán's Carvalho novels read the city through food, class, policing, and post-Franco change. Roberto Bolaño belongs to a later Barcelona of migration, publishing, and literary friendships. Bookshops such as La Central and Laie, plus the Ateneu Barcelonès, make that side of the city easy to fold into a normal day. Music and performance are worth planning around, not adding at the end. The Liceu is the main opera house, the Palau de la Música Catalana is both a major concert hall and a Modernisme landmark, and L'Auditori is the home of the city's symphony orchestra. If you care about serious music, check the calendar before choosing dates. Barcelona offers more serious cultural life than many visitors expect because the venues are not isolated cultural boxes; they sit inside the same language, architecture, and civic history that shape the city outside.