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The rooftop of Antoni

Gaudí’s Casa Milà.

Barcelona
Spain’s most sensual city has it all—great food, distinctive
architecture, and compelling contemporary design—plus it’s set at the
edge of a stunning beach. By Andrew Ferren
Something’s cooking in Barcelona. The city that has long been Spain’s which—given that cities like Rio de Janeiro were in the running—is
stockpot of style is boiling over with creative fervor—whether it’s on a not bad for a place that pretty much forgot it even had a beach for
restaurant stove or in artists’ studios, design ateliers, or just out on the several hundred years.
streets. Ferran Adrià, the high priest of nueva cocina, adores his home- It was not until hosting the 1992 Olympics that Barcelona rediscov-
town: “The best thing about Barcelona is that it has absolutely everything ered its coastline—then virtually inaccessible behind old railroad
you could ask for in a big cosmopolitan modern city,” the chef says, “but tracks, dockyards, and warehouses—and since then it’s been invest-
it can still be navigated as easily as a charming medieval one.” Like the ing heavily to open it all back up. But with tourism booming in the years
perfect mise en place of a professional kitchen, Barcelona has every since the Summer Games, some of the city’s coolest neighborhoods
© Ashley Cooper/Corbis

ingredient prepared exactly as it should be and it’s all within easy reach. were on the verge of becoming theme parks.
There are few cities in the world in which a 20-minute stroll might “I can really feel that the city is in the process of reinventing itself,” says
take you from a 13th-century Gothic cathedral, past a museum full Santi Moix, a painter who divides his time between Barcelona and New
of Picassos, to a world-famous opera house, and then onto a sandy York. “There is a return to authenticity and quality not just in arts, but in
beach and into the azure waters of the Mediterranean. National Geo- everything. Now that we’ve shown the world what we can do with food
graphic recently named Barcelona the best beach city in the world, there is this incredible energy to do the same in other arenas.” w

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Clockwise from top: © Hans Georg Roth/Corbis; © Courtesy of Drolma Restaurant; © Arduino Vannucchi; © Alan Roberts/Alamy
The Fundació
Joan Miró.

An arena in which the city already excels is hospitality, with some-

Drolma, chef
thing like 20 five-star hotels—including the swank W and Mandarin Fermí Puig’s
Oriental. And no hotel seems complete without a Michelin-starred res- restaurant
in the Hotel
taurant. Moix’s favorite is Drolma, inside the Hotel Majestic, where chef Majestic.
Fermí Puig serves his updated Catalan classics in grand style.
One imagines the accommodations were more rustic when the
Carthaginians first set up shop here in the third century b.c. Today’s
Barcelona of just over 1.6 million people is the capital of Spain’s north-
eastern Catalunya region, but it was already a thriving cosmopolitan
port back when landlocked Madrid was just a dusty fortress with some
houses clustered around it.
Through periods of tremendous prosperity or during invasions,
wars, and devastating plagues, Catalans’ enduring merchant men-
tality has always meant getting back to business without missing a
beat. By the mid-19th century, the walled city—the area today
known as the Gothic Quarter—was among the most densely popu-
lated in the world. When the walls came down in the 1850s, Barce-
Parc Güell,
lona spread out, in surprisingly orderly fashion, to the Eixample, a designed by Gaudí.
vast grid of streets and avenues that remains a model of intelligent
urban planning.
The Eixample’s streets are home to some of the most beloved
buildings in the world: Modernista (as Art Nouveau is known in Span-
ish) marvels such as Casa Milà and Casa Batlló by Antoni Gaudí and
other striking examples by his contemporaries, such as Lluís
Domènech i Montaner and Josep Puig i Cadafalch, who have left an
indelible imprint on the look of the city. “Barcelona has long been an
architect’s city,” says Oscar Tusquets Blanca, who designed the sen-
sitive expansion and modernization of (text continues on page 120) w
Vila Viniteca wine
shop and charcuterie.
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barcelona
Domènech i Montaner’s ornate music hall,
A view of the the Palau de la Música Catalana. “Styles,
Passeig de
Gràcia at dusk. movements, and revivals last as long as they
last,” Tusquets Blanca explains. “Tremen-
dous creativity was unleashed by the Russian
Revolution, for instance, but that lasted about
five years. For some reason, Barcelona’s cre-
ative run has been considerably longer.”
Certainly the city’s architectural “run” began
long before Art Nouveau. The best way to un-
derstand its history is to trace development
from neighborhood to neighborhood, starting
in the Gothic Quarter, which faces the port and
is the heart of the old city. Here, in a jumble

George Apostolidis © Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group

of narrow streets lined with 400-, 500-, and
600-year-old houses that appear to be holding
one another up, you’ll find the Cathedral, City
Hall, and countless Gothic and Renaissance
palaces with their brooding portals opening
onto charming interior courtyards.
At the old town’s eastern edge are the Born
and Ribera neighborhoods, now a vortex of
trendsetting shops. As laundry flutters on the
balconies above, a different kind of rag trade
unfolds in boutiques like La Comercial, which
has five outposts in the space of two blocks.
Among artist Santi Moix’s mandatory stops in
 the Born is Vila Viniteca, a wine and specialty
food shop run by Joaquim Vila, who Moix says Bar Mut, a popular
spot for tapas.
“can tell you everything you need to know
about Spanish and Catalan wines.”
To the west of the old city is the barrio known
as El Raval, which, though rapidly gentrify-
ing, still mixes in enough urban grit to give it
an authentic edge (translation: keep a tight
grip on your wallet or purse). The main bou-
levard of the old city, the bustling Rambla,
runs from the Plaça de Catalunya down to
the old port. There is a lot to love about the
Rambla, despite its exotic-bird sellers and
unruly hubbub. There’s the famous Boqueria
market, an 18th-century produce market that
is the heart and soul of the city’s culinary cir-
cuit. (It says everything that two of Barcelona’s
biggest tourist attractions are produce mar-
kets—the other, the Santa Caterina market in
La Ribera, has a wildly undulating mosaic-
clad roof and was featured in an architecture
exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in
Courtesy of Bar Mut

New York.) Other addresses worth noting

are the Gran Teatre del Liceu, one of Europe’s
most storied opera houses, and MACBA,
the museum of contemporary art built by
Richard Meier. w
 barcelona

From top: © Yann Guichaoua/Superstock/Corbis; George Apostolidis © Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group
Casa Amatller
and Casa Batlló.

Beyond its flamboyant architecture, the other

notable draw of the Eixample is its shopping.
The famous Passeig de Gràcia is lined with
luxury boutiques such as Bagués-Masriera in
Puig i Cadafalch’s neo-Gothic Casa Amatller.
Besides their own contemporary designs,
Bagués continues to produce (from the orig-
inal molds) the stunning gold and enamel
jewelry designs of Lluís Masriera, one of the
masters of Art Nouveau.
Just steps away from such high-end empo-
ria, on the side streets of the Eixample, a
handful of independent local fashion design-
ers are at work. “Barcelona has this incred-
ible heritage of design and craft, and you can
still find talented people producing amazing
clothes and leather goods right here in the city,”
says Lisa Richardson, a former fashion de-
signer in Milan. Two years ago she and fellow
fashionista Niki Robinson started Antiques & The entrance to
Boutiques, offering clients bespoke shopping the Mandarin
Oriental hotel.
tours throughout the city. w
barcelona

The beachside
W Barcelona resort.

An entirely different retail atmosphere

exists north of the broad Avinguda Diagonal
in the multiethnic and arty neighborhood of
Gràcia. Once a separate village that gave the
Passeig de Gràcia (essentially the road to
Gràcia) its name, the area still maintains its
own distinct flavor and village atmosphere.
With narrower streets, smaller buildings, and
lower rents than the surrounding Eixample,
Gràcia is a haven for retail upstarts, with lots
of trendy shops selling sneakers, bikes, and
vintage clothing; it also offers wine bars and
a fantastic selection of Moroccan, Portuguese,
Greek, and Lebanese restaurants.
Where Gràcia converges with the Eixample,
tiny Carrer Sèneca is dense with cool shops—
featuring everything from designer baby clothes
to vintage purses—as well as restaurants
that mix high style with easygoing charm. You
can even stay in the neighborhood at Casa
Fuster, one of Domènech i Montaner’s most
sumptuous residential structures and now w

From Top: Eric Laignel; JJ Coll

Bel y Cia
haberdashery.
barcelona

a five-star hotel with a famous jazz bar, Café

Vienés, where Woody Allen jammed while
shooting Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
A few 21st-century architectural marvels
have already risen in the city—or at least at its
edges. Toyo Ito, Richard Rogers, and Jean
Nou­v el have all built shimmering towers.
And of course the spires of Gaudí’s Sagra-
da Família—recently consecrated by the
MACBA, Barcelona’s Pope—continue their ascent on the horizon.
contemporary art museum.
It is now slated for completion in 2026, and
despite the fact that it’s being constructed
without Gaudí (or any of his drawings, which
were lost decades ago), it will still be consid-
ered the most important religious structure of
the 20th century.
Gastronomically the city is thriving, as many
alums from El Bulli, Ferran Adrià’s world-
famous restaurant an hour north of Barce-
lona (which is scheduled to close at least
temporarily next year), have set up their own
establishments. El Bulli’s former executive
chef, Albert Raurich, has opened the Asian-
inspired Dos Palillos in the funky Casa Camper

From top: © O. Alamany & E. Vicens/Corbis; Courtesy of VinÇon

Hotel in the Raval. And Carles Abellán is now
in charge of five kitchens, including the low-
key Tapas 24 as well as the swank grill Bravo
at the W hotel. Even as he contemplates his
next move, Adrià and his brother have just
launched a tapas bar called Tickets, in the
heart of the theater district, which will no doubt
be the next hot ticket in town.
But then revivals and beginnings are nothing
new in a city where locals still dance the Sar-
dana in front of the Cathedral on Sundays and
vintage jewelry is snapped up by urban hip-
sters at the weekend antiques market near
the port. In Barcelona, gorgeous authenticity
lurks around every corner.

Vinçon, the city’s

largest design store.