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Gràcia
Named after a long-destroyed fifteenth-century monastery,
Gràcia
was a
village for much of its early existence before being annexed as a fully fledged
suburb of the city in the late nineteenth century. Beginning at the top of
Passeig de Gràcia, and bordered roughly by c/Balmes to the west and the
streets above the Sagrada Família to the east, it’s traditionally been home to
arty and political types, students and the intelligentsia, though Gràcia also has
a genuine local population (including one of the city’s biggest Romany
communities) that even today lends it an attractive small-town atmosphere.
Consequently, its traditional annual summer festival, the Festa Major every
August – a week’s worth of concerts, parades, fireworks and parties – has no
peer in any other neighbourhood. Actual sights are few and far between, but
much of the pleasure to be had here is serendipitous; wander the narrow,
gridded eighteenth- and nineteenth-century streets, park yourself on a bench
under a plane tree, catch a film or otherwise take time out from the rigours
of city-centre life.You’ll soon get the feel of a neighbourhood that – unlike
some in Barcelona – still has a soul.
Gràcia is around a thirty-minute hike from Plaça de Catalunya.
Getting there
by public transport means taking the FGC train from Plaça de Catalunya to
Gràcia station, or buses 22 or 24 from Plaça de Catalunya up c/Gran de Gràcia,
or the metro to either
o
Diagonal (south) or
o
Fontana (north). From any of
the stations, it’s around a five-hundred-metre walk to Gràcia’s two central
squares, Plaça del Sol and Plaça Rius i Taulet, in the network of gridded streets
off the eastern side of c/Gran de Gràcia.
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THE NORTHERN SUBURBS
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Gràcia