Map of Barcelona

This map of Barcelona shows its most important sights, landmarks, museums and so on. Those indicated by a yellow marker are related with Antoni Gaudí and Modernisme, the Spanish form of Art Nouveau, most associated with architecture.

Finding Your Way around Barcelona
One of the nice things about Barcelona is that you almost always know where you are. As with most seaside places, this is partly because the sea will usually be downhill from you, but in the case of Barcelona, you have two higher landmarks to orientate yourself by. Montjuic is to the south of the city, the greenish area near the bottom of the map, while Tibidabo, the 'magic mountain,' is in the Serra de Collserolla, the green hills in the top left corner, nowadays urban park. You have different ways to get up Tibidabo: a bus service (the Tibibùs) which runs from the central Plaça de Catalunya, and a funicular railway which goes up the hill from the Plaça del Doctor Andreu (it is currently closed for repairs but should reopen in February 2007). Tibidabo has an amusement park, and the views over the city from Tibidabo are spectacular, but there is more of actual interest on Montjuic - a number of museums, a theatre complex, another amusement park, the odd but endearing Poble Espanyol (Spanish Village), and more.

Under Tibidabo, the triangle formed by the Avinguida Diagonal to the south and, very roughly, the Avinguida Meridiana to the east is where you will find most of the Gaudi works which may be one of the reasons which have drawn you to Barcelona, including the Sagrada Familia basilica and the Park Güell. And for logical historical reasons (these are the suburbs of the Catalan haute bourgouisie which emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century) most of the other numerous, fine examples of 'modernist' architecture ('modernisme' being the Catalan version of art nouveau) are not far away, in the Quadrat d'Or centred on the Passeig de Gràcia which runs south from the Avinguida Diagonal to the Plaça de Catalunya.

The Plaça de Catalunya is hidden under the 'e' of Barcelona on the map, but you don't have to zoom in much to see that it is a very large, open square, and it has a good claim to being the centre of Barcelona. For on it converge the Passeig de Gràcia and the Rambla de Catalunya from the north, while off it to the south leads La Rambla or Las Ramblas, Barcelona's emblematic, historic boulevard, lined with flower and book stalls. To the south of the Plaça de Catalunya, too, and east of the Rambla, lies the Ciutat Vella, the historic centre, including the Barrì­ Gótic, the mediaeval quarter (I say mediaeval, you can even find Roman remains here). On the other side of the Ramblas is El Raval, the old Barrio Chino (Chinatown)* or red-light district, once decidedly dodgy, now distressingly chic.

East of the Ciutat Vella is La Ribera, the city centre in the 13th and 14th centuries, when Catalan sea-power was nearing its height (the name means 'shore'). It is an interesting area, but Barcelona has so much to offer that most visitors will only have time to stop at the Picasso Museum. In the same way, the Parc de la Ciutadella which overlooks La Ribera is of considerable historic** importance (the 'ciutadella' in question was a fortress built by Felipe V to assert his control over the city, so a detested symbol of Spanish power over Catalonia), but you are most likely to want to visit it because it contains Barcelona Zoo, one of the most important in Europe.

And that takes you down to the sea-front. The Barceloneta district is a traditional fishermen's quarter, now packed with restaurants (fish and seafood restaurants, naturally), bars, pubs and discos, buzzing with nightlife especially but not only in the summer. It has its own beach, and in the other direction faces back towards the city over the Port Vell, the old fishing port. South-west of it lie the real Port of Barcelona, the extensive docks and wharves used today by ferries, liners, tankers and freighters. North-east of the Barceloneta, next to the Parc de la Ciutadella, is the Olympic Village, built for the 1992 games - that's the Olympic Marina you can see on the map, sticking out into the Mediterranean just under the 'R' of 'Ronda del Litoral' - and if you follow the latter up along the shore past Barcelona's beaches, you will come to the complex built for the Forum, as the 2004 Universal Forum of Cultures is less grandly referred to. On the map, it is the complex next to the convergence of the Ronda del Litoral and the Avinguida Diagonal. The Forum does have a number of bars and restaurants, but considering how much more Barcelona has to offer, if you get that far, it is quite likely to be because you are attending one of the events put on there - Primavera Sound, the Festival del Mercè, and so on.


*Exactly why the Spanish use 'Chinatown' as a synonym for 'red-light district' is uncertain (the term is not used anywhere else in the Spanish-speaking world), but it seems sure that El Raval was the first such quarter to be given the name. Different journalists of the 1920s are "credited" with ascribing the term to the area. One, seductive explanation is that the city's governor of the time, tired of the constant violent clashes between anarchists and gangs of gunmen in the hire of Catalonia's capitalists, said "I'm fed up with hearing about the Fifth District. Enough of districts. Make something up! Chinatown, for example." Wikipedia's explanation, that the lamps (often emitting a reddish light) which illuminated the entrances to brothels were reminiscent of those outside Chinese restaurants, is credible but too prosaic for our tastes. A more likeable etymology is that a film set in San Francisco's Chinatown (perhaps Edward G. Robinson's The Hatchet Man, 1932) reminded journalists of the Barcelona quarter, which must have been pretty lawless in those days - it wasn't all that law-abiding as recently as the eighties.

**Historic, and symbolic. The Catalan Houses of Parliament are there.

This streetmap of Barcelona comes courtesy of those nice young people over at Google, bless their little cotton socks. It will centre where you double click, you can pan over it using the arrows (or dragging the rectangle in the overview map in the corner), and you can zoom in and out using the '+' and '-' buttons. Neat, ain't it? I have pre-selected the "Hybrid" view, just because I happen to like the look of it — if you would rather see the street map without the aerial photographs, just click "Map" (or "Mapa" or whatever it says in your language). Or select the "Satellite" view to remove the street names and other map elements.

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