“How many cities can you fit into 100 square km of landscape?”

From a sleepy Roman military camp to ruler of a Mediterranean trade empire, from a city (and culture) oppressed to an Olympic city, aspiring conference centre and outdoor shop-ping mall, Barcelona’s 2000 years of history have left their marks and flourishes. Physically, Barcelona is like three cities or more, layered inside each other like Russian nesting dolls;

the old gothic city centre gives way to the rigidly blocked angles of Cerdà’s Eixample (“enlargement” in Catalan), drawn up on paper in the mid-1800’s and mostly coloured in by early in the 20th century, which in turn give way to the industrial suburbs that stretched out to the Besòs River in the North and the Llobregat in the South during the Franco dictatorship to accommodate the migrant workers from the south of Spain.

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Barcelona

destinationspotlightdestinationspotlight

it’S A town, it’S A city. it’S An AmuSement PArk, it’S A culturAl centre. it’S a NEVErENDING DrEam. BArcelonA hAS a BIt OF EVErytHING FOr EVEryONE.

mountAin And SeA, modern And hiStoric, SmAll town And coSmoPolitAn. thiS city iS BeAutiful And well vAried, But She’S got growing PAinS.

Always ambitious and enamoured of innova-tion, Barcelona continues to reinvent herself in embracing globalisation and striving for a privi-leged place on the European scene. The massive restructuring of the city for the 1992 Olympics brought a flood of changes and investments; the much-maligned debacle that was the 2004 Uni-versal Forum of Cultures even more. Barcelona now faces a flood of over 5 million tourists annu-ally and struggles to accept and integrate an im-migrant population of over 15%.

“When do they close the downtown?”It’s like an urban legend; I’ve been repeatedly told that some friend or another has been asked on more than one occa- sion how late the old town is open. It can seem like an outdoor shopping mall and muse-um; it’s architecturally one of the most interesting cities in the world and downtown is full of bou-tiques and department stores. But although the bars close at 3am and the metro locks up at mid-night (2am on weekends) there’s no gatekeeper.As you wander through the old city, you’ll see bits and pieces of Roman architecture incor-porated into new buildings or encased beneath glass, as in the case of the new Mercat de Santa Caterina. As the old city undergoes its perpetual facelift— two of the city’s three major gothic churches have been under restoration for years—new ruins continue to be found and built around or incorporated.Barcelona is the modernist capital of the world and you’re undoubtedly familiar with Antoni Gaudí and the Sagrada Familia if you’ve so much

as glanced at a guidebook. But don’t miss out on some of the other fantastic marks left by architects no less impressive. My personal fa-vourite, Domènech i Montaner, is responsible for the Palau de la Música Catalana, the zoological museum in the Ciutadella park and the Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau, still a fully functional hospital built with the patients spirits in mind: beautiful, uplifting pavilions protrude to house patients from the underground labyrinth of ser-vice areas.

Tomato Bread, Roast Rabbit with Allioli, Arròs Negre,

Red Red Wine

After wondering at the cathedral, being trampled by throngs of tourist groups, ogling hot hipster Catalan girls with mullets and having your pocket picked by some faceless

youth in a tracksuit, get thee to some suste-nance. Maybe you’re on a budget; Barcelona is the city for you to splurge in. From the old Span-ish grandpa bar to the upscale Ferran Adrià-type joint, gastronomy is another thing Barcelona excels at.The Catalans have a sparse breakfast of strong coffee and pastry and save themselves for the lunch hour. Between 2 and 4pm, head to a res-taurant for a menú: if you choose wisely you will be treated to 2 courses and dessert with wine and coffee for 8-10€. Don’t be afraid of the dingi-er looking restaurants; if the floor is covered with used napkins or it looks well-frequented you’re likely to leave tipsy and happily stuffed. Later, when you’re hungry again, a glut of tapas bars await you in the Barceloneta.Around the turn of the last century Barcelona

authorbio Tiffany Carter, originally native to the Appalachian mountains, moved to Barcelona two years ago from Berlin in hot pursuit of a hot Catalan man. A frequent contributor to and copy editor of the alternative newsweekly BCN Week, she’s currently working on a Southern Gothic novel and does some translation and English teaching on the side. She lives with her boyfriend and their cat in a tiny, dusty apartment in the Barri Gòtic and enjoys baking and Aikido.

Work in progress - Gaudi’s Sacrada Familia. Strolling through Barcelona’s downtown. A Gaudi house: Casa Battlo. Enough culture, hit the beach.

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Barcelona

EdinburghBest view: from Mt. Tibidabo amusement park. Mansion on the hill: Montjuic. Watch your step on the roof of Casa Battlo.

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had a café scene to rival Vienna’s; many of the cafés were later demolished but quite a few still exist. Els Quatre Gats, just a stone’s throw from les Rambles, was created by Puig i Cadafalch and was stomping grounds for a young Picasso and a great many other lo-cal personalities and celebrities. The Café de l’Opera on the Rambles started out as a boarding tavern in the 18th century and by the mid-1800s had become a chocolateria done up in the Viennese style. In 1928 it was bought by the present owners who remod-elled it in the modernist style.

explore ... Les Rambles Possibly the liveliest and most well-trodden street in Europe, the Rambla is a carnival, pet store, flower shop, whorehouse, outdoor bar and more. It bustles night and day with locals and tourists alike and is home to the Virreina Palace, the famous Liceu theatre, a wax mu-seum and other interesting things. As García Lorca once said, the Rambla is “the only street in the world I wish would never end.”

La Boquería It’s not Barcelona’s oldest market, but it may be the biggest and it’s undoubtedly the most frequented. It awaits you just off the Rambla with stalls filled with beautiful stacks of fruits and veggies, cheeses, cured legs of jabugo ham, goat heads, every type of seafood you ever could have imagined, some of it still squirming on beds of ice and even edible insects...

Montjuic The hill of the Jews, as it would be called in English, was used to grow food and graze animals in the old days. The fortress on top is built atop an ancient Jewish cemetery, dates largely to the 17th century and was used mostly as a political prison over the years. Generalísimo Franco made it his inter-rogation headquarters. The first large-scale construction on the

hill began when it was chosen as host site for the 1929 International Exposition: the Palau Nacional, the Poble Espanyol and the Olym-pic stadium, originally built to host an alterna-tive anti-fascist 1936 Olympics, all survive. Mies van der Rohe’s German national pavilion was destroyed in 1930 but rebuilt in 1988. Also home to the Fundació Miró museum, the Mercat de les Flors theater, the Teatre Grec Festival and a really cool botanical garden with a bunch of giant cactuses.

El Raval I’m not telling you to neglect Gràcia, the Barceloneta or the Born, but definitely check out the Raval. Formerly notable for the heavy traffic of sailors, prostitutes, pushers, petty thieves and quarreling neighbors, its ambi-ence got it nicknamed Chinatown (Barri Xi-nès) after the 1920 film of the same name. It’s been cleaned up a bit since the heady days, but you can still smell its seedy underbelly. It’s probably got more cultural diversity than any other spot in Spain and possibly the best nightlife in Barcelona.

Ciutadella park Before 1714 it comprised most of the old maritime quarter, afterwards it was the site of a huge and hated citadel built by the Bourbons to control the city. Finally it was recovered for the citizens, and for the 1888 Universal Exposition it was converted into a park. Now it’s a popular hangout; on any given day you’ll find it full of kids on blankets watching each other juggle, practice capoeira and eat fire or dance in the pavilion. The zoo-logical museum was designed by Domènech i Muntaner as the restaurant for the Exposi-tion; a very young Gaudí also worked in the park, and although nothing can be directly attributed to him he may have col-laborated on the cast-iron entrance gates.

don’tmiss.Off the most beaten trackAfter taking a walking or bike tour, if you have an extra day, go up the other mountain, the Collserola. There are two funiculars from the city, one leads up to Vallvidrera, a cute little town that reminds me a bit of Santa Barbara in California. Find the hiking trails and you can sip from mountain springs and surprise wild baby boars feasting on figs and acorns. There are over 50 notable archaeological finds in the Collserola park, including the Cova de l’Or, a cave dwelling dating to the Neo-lithic period. The other funicular leads to Tibidabo, the mountain’s highest peak. The Tibidabo amusement park is over a hundred years old, adding an extra thrill to riding any of the rides and gazing out over Barcelona at 512m above the city. goingfurther.About an hour outside of Barcelona to the West is Montserrat with her 1235m peak—home of beautiful views, a Benedictine abbey and according to some, the Holy Grail in Arthurian myth. It’s a great place for hiking. An hour to the north is Girona, which has an adorable old city and a beautiful patchwork of colourfully painted build-ings along the river Onyar. The Call, or old Jewish quarter, is home to a very interesting Jewish museum; before the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, Girona was a leading centre for the study of the Kabbala. Another hour to the north, Figueras is Salvador Dalí’s hometown and he donated an entire museum to it, the Teatre-Museu Dalí. Sitges, to the south, is home to a thriving gay community and an annual well-respected film festival.

Colourful Girona.