Life in Barcelona is an engaging mix of Madrid-style love of life and Parisian elegance and taste. Spain’s second-biggest city is one of the hottest tourist destinations in Europe, with more than 7 million visitors a year, so its popular pedestrian boulevards can become human traffic jams.
Despite its notorious crowds, there’s plenty to enjoy. Everywhere you go, you’ll find the city’s architecture to be colorful, playful, and unique. Rows of symmetrical ironwork balconies are punctuated with fanciful details: bay windows, turrets, painted tiles, hanging lanterns, flower boxes, and carved reliefs.
In its day, this proud city has been a Roman retirement colony, a maritime power, a dynamo of the Industrial Age, and an urban poster child for modernism. Today it cobbles together all these elements into a one-of-a-kind culture….