The Rough Guide to Barcelona 8 (Rough Guide Travel Guides)

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publishing family – after the original architect quit, the modernista architect
Lluís Domènech i Montaner took over halfway through construction, and the
top half of the facade is clearly more elaborate than the lower part. Meanwhile,
the period’s most celebrated craftsmen were set to work on the interior, which
sports rich mosaic floors, painted glass, carved woodwork and a monumental
staircase.The building is now the seat of the Madrid government’s delegation
to Catalunya, but there are guided tours at the weekend (Sat at 10.30am in
English, plus others in Spanish/Catalan at 11.30am & 12.30pm and Sun at
10.30am, 11.30am & 12.30pm in Spanish/Catalan; €5; T933 177 652,W www
which explain something of the house’s history and
show you the public rooms, grand dining room and courtyard. It’s unusual to
be able to get inside a private modernista house of the period, so it’s definitely
worth the effort.
Mercat de la Concepció and around
The Dreta’s finest neighbourhood market, the Mercat de la Concepció (Mon
8am–3pm,Tues–Fri 8am–8pm, Sat 8am–4pm; July & Aug closes 3pm; Wwww
, was inaugurated in 1888, its iron-and-glass tram-shed
structure reminiscent of others in the city. Flowers, shrubs, trees and plants are
a Concepció speciality (the florists on c/de Valencia are open 24 hours a day),
and there are a couple of good snack bars inside the market and a few outdoor
cafés to the side.
The market takes its name from the nearby church of La Concepció
(entrance on c/Roger de Llúria; daily 8am–1pm & 5–9pm; free), whose quiet
cloister is a surprising haven of slender columns and orange trees. This was
part of a fifteenth-century Gothic convent that once stood in the old town.
It was abandoned in the early nineteenth century and then transferred here
brick by brick in the 1870s, along with the Romanesque belfry from another
old-town church.
A couple of restored corners showing something of the spirit of the original
Eixample plan are found just to the south, by walking down c/Roger de Llúria.
At no. 56, between carrers Consell de Cent and Diputació, a herringbone-brick
tunnel leads into the Jardins de les Torres de les Aigües (daily 10am–dusk;
free), an enclosed square centred on a Moorish-style water tower.The plan was
for all the city’s nineteenth-century inhabitants to have access to such gardens
and public spaces, and it has been handsomely restored by the city council, who
turn it into a backyard beach every summer, complete with sand and paddling
pool. Another example of the old Eixample lies directly opposite, across
c/Roger de Llúria, where the cobbled Passatge del Permanyer cuts across an
Eixample block, lined by candy-coloured single-storey townhouses.
Casa Calvet
Gaudí fans will want to finish an Eixample tour by crossing the Gran Via de
les Corts Catalanes to tick off the great man’s earliest commissioned townhouse
building, erected for a prominent local textile family. Casa Calvet, at c/de
Casp 48 (o Urquinaona/Catalunya), dates from 1899 and, though fairly
conventional in style, the Baroque inspiration on display in the sculpted facade
and church-like lobby was to surface again in his later, more elaborate buildings
on Passeig de Gràcia. If you want a closer look inside, you’ll have to book a
table in the fancy restaurant, Casa Calvet (W ), that now
occupies the premises.
THE EIXAMPLE
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Dreta de l’Eixample