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north up Avinguda Pau Casals to
Turó Parc
(daily 10am–dusk), a good place
to rest weary feet, with a small lake and a café kiosk.
Avinguda Diagonal to Barcelona Sants
South of the Diagonal stand several much larger examples of the
modernista
and
Neoclassical spirit which infused public buildings of the nineteenth century.
The Batlló textile mill on the corner of c/del Comte d’Urgell and c/del
Rossello underwent major refurbishment in 1908 to emerge as the
Escola
Industrial
(
o
Hospital Clinic). It occupies four entire Eixample blocks, with
later academic buildings added in the 1920s, including a chapel by Joan Rubió
i Bellvér, who worked with Antoni Gaudí. Students usually fill the courtyards,
and no one minds if you take a stroll through.A block to the east is the massive
Hospital Clinic
(1904), with its fine pedimented portico, while the neigh-
bourhood
Mercat del Ninot
(Mon 7am–2pm, Tues–Thurs 7am–2pm &
5.30–8.30pm, Fri 7am–8pm, Sat 7am–3pm;
W
www.mercatdelninot.com), built
in 1892, takes up a large area to the south, between carrers Villaroel and
Casanova.This is almost entirely tourist-free, with produce, meat and fish inside
and rows of shops around the block outside selling clothes, jewellery, accessories
and homeware.
Barcelona Sants to Plaça d’Espanya
Basque architect Luis Peña Ganchegui’s
Parc de l’Espanya Industrial
(daily
10am–dusk;
o
Sants Estació) lies two minutes’ walk away around the southern
side of Barcelona Sants station. Built on the site of an old textile factory, it has
a line of red-and-yellow-striped lighthouses at the top of glaring white steps,
with an incongruously classical Neptune in the water below. Altogether, six
sculptors are represented here and, along with the boating lake, café kiosk,
playground and sports facilities provided, the park takes a decent stab at recon-
ciling local interests with the mundane nature of the surroundings.
To the south, down c/de Tarragona,
Parc Joan Miró
(daily 10am–dusk;
o
Tarragona) was laid out on the site of the nineteenth-century municipal
slaughterhouse. It features a raised piazza whose main feature is Joan Miró’s
gigantic mosaic sculpture
Dona i Ocell
(
Woman and Bird
), towering above a
shallow reflecting pool. It’s a familiar symbol if you’ve studied Miró’s other
works, but the sculpture is known locally by several other names – all of them
easy to guess when you consider its erect, helmeted shape.The rear of the park
is given over to games areas and landscaped sections of palms and firs, with a
kiosk café and some outdoor tables found in amongst the trees.The children’s
playground here is one of the best in the city, with a climbing frame and aerial
runway as well as swings and slides.
The former
Les Arenes
bullring (
o
Espanya) backing Parc Joan Miró is
undergoing a massive Richard Rogers-inspired refit, to convert it into a
leisure and retail complex with enormous roof terrace, while retaining the
circular Moorish facade of 1900. Also spared the wrecker’s ball is the six-
storey
modernista
Casa Papallona
(1912), on the eastern side of Les Arenes
on c/de Llança. It’s one of the city’s favourite house facades, crowned by a
huge ceramic butterfly.
THE EIXAMPLE
|
Esquerra de l’Eixample