Almost inevitably, everyone’s first glimpse of Barcelona will be Las Ramblas, the city’s most famous promenade, which cuts through the Old City in a mile-long journey to the seafront. It may look like one street (and it’s often referred to simply as La Rambla), bu .... Click Here for More Barri Gotic The Ramblas mark the western boundary of the Barri Gòtic, the hub of the city for more than two thousand years. It’s one of the best preserved Gothic quarters in Europe, a dizzy maze of palaces, squares and churches piled on top of the remnants of the original Roman se .... Click Here for More La Ribera and Sant Pere The old artisan’s district of La Ribera is a funky, fashionable neighbourhood with some of the city’s trendiest bars, restaurants and shopping, as well as its most popular museum (the Picasso Museum), its most beautiful church and a string of elegant palaces along Carrer Montca .... Click Here for More El Raval The Raval area is now one of the hippest neighbourhoods in the city, packed with slick clubs, bars, shops and restaurants, but just a century or so ago it was a miserable slum. The streets nearest the port formed the most notorious red light district on the Mediterranean, filled with whorehouses .... Click Here for More Eixample The Eixample (pronounced Ai-sham-play) is Barcelona’s most upmarket neighbourhood, with its finest restaurants and designer boutiques and one of the greatest concentrations of art nouveau monuments in Europe. This elegant, bourgeois district was created by a utopian sociali .... Click Here for More Montjuic The ancient promontory of Montjuïc rises up above the sea to the west of the city. A green, park-filled oasis, it’s undergone dramatic face lifts in the last century or so. Palaces, museums and gardens were constructed for Barcelona’s International Exhibition of 1929 and the upper .... Click Here for More Gracia and Park Guell Gràcia was an independent town until 1897, when it was dragged, under protest, into the burgeoning city of Barcelona. The ‘Liberation for Gràcia’ movement hasn’t quite died out, with the occasional T-shirt and graffitied scrawl demanding freedom from big .... Click Here for More Seaside The seafront in Barcelona was the main focus for the frenzy of construction and redevelopment which heralded the 1992 Olympic Games. The brash, glistening development of the Port Olímpic was erected in all its towering, neon-lit splendour and the old port was utterly transformed: now, yacht .... Click Here for More Outskirts There are plenty of things to do around the edge of the city centre in Barcelona. Few attractions – besides the giddy peak of Tibidabo with its funfair and the huge Nou Camp stadium in Les Corts – are on the tourist trail but some lesser known sights, .... Click Here for More Montserrat The Monastery of Montserrat, clamped high to a dramatic reddish massif (Montserrat means ‘jagged mountain’) and home to a miraculous statue of the Virgin known as La Moreneta (‘the little brown one’) is one of the most popular day trips from Barcelona. The Mo .... Click Here for More Sitges The belle of the whole coastline south of Barcelona is undoubtedly Sitges, a whitewashed town clustered around a rosy church out on a promontory. Famously trendy, it gets packed with hip Barcelonans on summer weekends and has become a mecca for gay visitors, who put the kick into its famously ov .... Click Here for More Tarragona Tarragona, imposingly perched on a rocky outcrop overlooking the sea, is one of the oldest cities in Spain and one of the most significant in Catalunya. The Romans established a military base here at the end of the 3rd century BC which played an important role in the conquest of the Iberian peni .... Click Here for More Girona Girona, Catalunya’s second city, is an unexpected charmer, sprawling languidly around the confluence of the Rivers Ter and Onyar. The expansive modern city, with its leafy avenues lined with galleries and a handful of Modernista mansions, lies on the west s .... Click Here for More Figueres Figueres is a likeable, down-to-earth provincial town which would be entirely unremarkable but for its most famous son: Salvador Dalí, who was born here at 6 Calle Monturiol on 11 May 1906. Thanks to its links with the celebrated artist and the spectacular Teatre-Museu DalíClick Here for More Paseo del Prado and around Madrid is home to three of Europe’s most important art museums – the Prado, the Reina Sofía and the Thyssen-Bornemisza – all happily located within strolling distance of each other (although only the most fanatical art buff would consider visiting all three in a single day). .... Click Here for More The Puerta del Sol is the crossroads of Madrid, the meeting point of ten major roads and shopping streets. It’s no beauty, but the endless flow of shoppers and commuters give it a certain brash energy. Just a few steps away is the enticing web of streets around the Plaza Santa Ana, which sl .... Click Here for More The Plaza Mayor is the grandest square in all Madrid, completely enclosed, and surrounded by elegant arcades. The Madrileños have all but abandoned it to tourists, but it’s still a handsome spot for a coffee out on the terrace. The area around it is known as Habsburg Madrid, or Madrid .... Click Here for More The traditionally working-class neighbourhoods of La Latina and Lavapiés spread steeply downhill towards the Manzanares River. Known as los barrios bajos they have traditionally been home to Madrid’s poorest workers, smelliest industries and most desperate immigrants. This was where th .... Click Here for More The broad sweep of the Gran Vía was created at the dawn of a new age, wide enough for motor cars and lined with the city’s first skyscrapers and cinemas (many of which preserve the old tradition of using handpainted billboards). Now a busy, traffic-clogged shopping street, it’s lo .... Click Here for More It’s easy to feel overwhelmed in this part of the city; the 19th-century entrepreneurs built their broad avenues and flashy palaces here, and the 20th-century wheeler-dealers added a string of high-tech skyscrapers along the brutal Paseo de Castellano with its constantly whizzing traffic. S .... Click Here for More On a clear day, you can see a huge, pale cross emerging from the backdrop of the mountains north of Madrid. This is the Valle de los Caídos, Franco’s enormous monument to the fallen of the Civil War, which became his tomb and is still a surprisingly popular day trip for los nostál .... Click Here for More Segovia is one of the most captivating cities in central Spain, built of golden stone, capped with a fairy tale castle and set against the dramatic peaks of the Sierra de Guadarrama. It’s almost as famous for its sturdy Castillian cuisine – with its legendary speciality of cochinillo ( .... Click Here for More Toledo is an enchanting city of narrow, winding streets, sitting on a hilltop beside the River Tajo. It’s been an important settlement since long before the Romans conquered it in the second century BC, and succeeding waves of conquerors and settlers have all left their mark here. During th .... Click Here for More The austere mountain town of Avila is set on a windswept plateau, surrounded by the chilly granite peaks of the Sierra de Gredos. The reddish-brown tangle of medieval mansions and Romanesque churches is completely enclosed by magnificent medieval walls, studded with towers and crenellations. Thi .... Click Here for More Lush Aranjuez is a rare oasis of green in the sun-baked Castillian plain. There’s another extravagant Bourbon palace, a favourite Royal retreat in summer, but Aranjuez is most famous for the exquisite gardens which stretch for miles and miles, as well as a fascinating Royal barge museum. Th .... Click Here for More Alcalá de Henares claim to fame was its University, which was established by Cardinal Cisneros (confessor to Isabel II) in 1498, and which came to rival even that of Salamanca as the intellectual centre of Spain. Cervantes was born here and Calderón de la Barca, Lope de Vega and Ignaci .... Click Here for More
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Barcelona - £7.99
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