1.Left Eixample
2.Right Eixample
The industrialized Barcelona with its medieval walls demolished allows the expansion of the city and fulfills the Cerdà Plan of 1859. A neutral compact unit grid meets mechanist and hygienist paradigms with the burgeoning Catalan bourgeoisie venture and the Catalan Modernism imprint in a rich and complex new urbanism.
The scope and the urban logic -of left and right expansion- generate two independent routes.
The left Eixample is a half day tour.
The right Eixample is a whole day tour. It can be separated in two zones: the one situated between Passeig de Gràcia, Diagonal avenue and the Auditori in the morning, and the Holy Family (Sagrada Família) zone, in the afternoon.
3.Panoramic Montjuïc
Between the city and the sea, the Montjuïc; panoramic view of the Barcelona mountain. The military panoptical site, the Universal Exhibition of 1929 landscaping, the 1992 Olympic Games, the cemetery, the quarry, the museums and the city park mark its varied history and incandescent present.
It's a whole day tour.
4.The Barceloneta and the seafront
The sea conceived only as goods trade with the railway lines along the coast -the least expensive city lands- marks the industrial model city, a structure that survives until Barcelona's nineties Olympic Games. Penetrating the Baroque urbanism of the Barceloneta fishing quarter and walking along the new waterfront open a new modern relationship of the Mediterranean Barcelona, one that is rooted in a not far away history.
It's a whole day tour.
5.The Born and the Ribera quarters
The powerful Gothic-Renaissance palaces in Montcada Street, the Born Old Market and its archaeological ruins being remodeled, the austerity and preciousness of the Catalan Gothic of Santa Maria del Mar, the modernism of the Palau de la Música and some contemporary buildings offer an intricate richness of this ancient city.
It's a half day tour.
6.The new Diagonal
Contained between the sea and the Tibidabo and Montjuïc mountains, Barcelona could only grow to the east. The recent extension of the Diagonal Avenue, the 22@ Poble Nou planning and the 2004 Universal Forum of Cultures event build a new Diagonal, a new urbanism with the most modern architecture.
It's a half day tour.
7.Sarrià-Sant Gervasi quarters
8.Pedralbes quarter
The old village of Sarrià, with its farm and vineyard origins set at the foot of the Collserolla mountain and annexed to Barcelona in 1921, is distinguished from other quarters of the city by a not compact urbanism. Pedralbes, with its gothic monastery gem and formerly belonging to Sarrià, is very similar.
Detached houses, gardens, high standing schools and health centers, a more introverted privacy and a rich residential architecture as a continuation of the rationalist lessons characterize this favorite place of the present bourgeoisie.
The extension and richness of two similar urban and architectonic districts generates two independent routes.
It's a whole day tour -the Sarrià-Sant Gervasi quarters in the morning and the Pedralbes quarter in the afternoon.
9.Gràcia quarter
Proud of its past as an independent district of Barcelona, with a tradition of agricultural and holidays origins, industrial and labor, anarchist, republican and bohemian, and with a present of cultural production and fertile association, Gràcia persists in its singularity. From Lesseps new urban node, with its unique library, through its narrow, bustling and atmospheric streets and numerous squares, Gràcia is both urban life and modernist, modern and contemporary architecture.
It's a half day tour.
10.The Gòtic and the Raval quarters
The walled Roman Barcino with its forum in the present Sant Jaume square presided by the Temple of its founder Augustus, the Palace of the Generalitat and the City Council building -the paradigmatic medieval institutions gathered in the same nucleus- added to the intricate medieval urban grid survive the track of time, they offer themselves as urban richness life.
The Raval quarter, next to the Gothic area, is a magma in urban (and social) construction. The potency of contemporary architecture turned into major museums and urban interventions as the new Raval Rambla becomes in liveliness, texture and variety.
It's a whole day tour -the Gòtic quarter in the morning and the Raval quarter in the afternoon.
11.Barcino night tour
The old city does not stop, the night perspires its history with other ways, with new and vivid textures and urban relations as if the gloom of the narrow streets invoked the Roman Augustus and amplified the Middle Ages. The panoptic sightseeing from a Raval viewpoint ends the "flâneur" experience in light phantasmagoria.
12.Vic, the Roman Ausa
From the Iberian Ausa, through the Roman city as a city council body and with a fertile medieval root, Vic reveals a rich history present in its streets and squares. With a double focus of feudal and religious origin reflected in the urban grid, the city also structures itself around the main piazza -formerly the Mercadal- as a third historical center, present core of the civic life. Vic, as an old walled city, preserved from its history five offside wall routes which were paths that linked the territory with the city doors. The fascinating concert hall under construction, the present quarter urbanization and the urban planning in phase of approval renew the city.
It's a half day tour.
