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back from the high wrought-iron entrance arch facing the Ramblas. It’s a riot
of noise and colour, as popular with locals who come here to shop daily as with
snap-happy tourists. Everything radiates out from the central banks of fish and
seafood stalls – glistening piles of fruit and vegetables, bunches of herbs and pots
of spices, baskets of wild mushrooms, mounds of cheese and sausage, racks of
bread, hanging hams, and overloaded meat counters. Many get waylaid at the
entrance by the eye-candy seasonal fruit cartons and squeezed juices, but the
flagship fruit and veg stalls here are pricey. It’s usually better value right inside,
and even more so in the small outdoor square just beyond the north side of the
market where the local allotment-holders and market-gardeners gather.
Everyone has a favourite market stall, but don’t miss seeing
Petras
, the wild
mushroom and dried insect stall (it’s at the back, by the market restaurant, the
Garduña
). If you really don’t fancy chilli worms, ant candy and crunchy beetles,
there are some excellent stand-up
tapas bars
in the market as well, open from
dawn onwards for the traders – the
Pinotxo
is the most famous.
Plaça de la Boqueria
Just past the market, the halfway point of the Ramblas is marked by
Plaça de
la Boqueria
, which sports a large round
mosaic by Joan Miró
in the middle
of the pavement. It’s become something of a symbol for the city and is one of
a number of public works in Barcelona by the artist, who was born just a couple
of minutes’ walk off the Ramblas in the Barri Gòtic (there’s a plaque to mark
the building on Passatge del Credit, off c/de Ferran). Close by, at Ramblas 82,
Josep Vilaseca’s
Casa Bruno Quadros
– the lower floor is now the Caixa
Sabadell – was built in the 1890s to house an umbrella store. Its unusual facade
is decorated with a green dragon and Oriental designs, and scattered with
parasols. On the other side of the Ramblas at no. 83 there are more
modernista
flourishes on the
Antiga Casa Figueras
(1902), which overdoses on stained
glass and mosaics, and sports a corner relief of a female reaper. It’s now a
renowned bakery-café.
Gran Teatre del Liceu
Facing the Ramblas at c/de Sant Pau is the restored
Gran Teatre del Liceu
(
o
Liceu), Barcelona’s celebrated opera house, which was founded as a private
theatre in 1847. It was rebuilt after a fire in 1861 to become Spain’s grandest
theatre, regarded as a bastion of the city’s late nineteenth-century commercial and
intellectual classes – it still has no royal box in a nod to its bourgeois antecedents.
The Liceu was devastated again in 1893, when an anarchist threw two bombs into
the stalls during a production of
William Tell
. He was acting in revenge for the
recent execution of a fellow anarchist assassin – twenty people died in the
bombing. It then burned down for the third time in 1994, when a worker’s
blowtorch set fire to the scenery during last-minute alterations to an opera set.
The latest restoration of the lavishly decorated interior took five years, and the
opera house opened again in 1999.
Tours
depart from the modern extension,
the
Espai Liceu
(tours daily 10am, 11.30am noon, 12.30pm & 1pm; €4/8.50
T
934 859 914,
W
www.liceubarcelona.com), which also houses a music and gift
shop and café. You’ll learn most on the more expensive hour-long 10am guided
tour; the other, cheaper tours are self-guided and last only twenty minutes.
Highlights include the classically inspired Salon of Mirrors, unaffected by any
of the fires and thus largely original in decor, and the impressive gilded audito-
rium containing almost 2300 seats – making it one of the world’s largest opera
THE RAMBLAS
|
Plaça de la Boqueria • Gran Teatre del
Liceu