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Away to the south is the Moll de Barcelona, a landscaped wharf leading to the
Torre de Jaume I
cable-car station
and the
Estació Marítima
, where ferries
leave for the Balearics.The large, bulbous building perched in the centre of the
wharf is the city’s
World Trade Centre
, where a luxury hotel complements
the complex of offices, convention halls, shops and restaurants.
From the quayside just beyond the foot of the Columbus monument,
Las
Golondrinas
sightseeing boats and the
Catamaran Orsom
depart on
regular trips throughout the year around the inner harbour – all the details
are on p.30.
The Mirador de Colón
Inaugurated just before the Universal Exhibition of 1888, the
Mirador de
Colón
(June–Sept daily 9am–8.30pm; Oct–May daily 10am–6.30pm; €2.50;
T
933 025 224) commemorates the visit made by Christopher Columbus to
Barcelona in June 1493.The Italian-born navigator was received in style by the
Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, who had supported his voyage of
exploration a year earlier, when Columbus had set out to chart a passage west
to the Orient. Famously, he failed in this, as he failed also to reach the North
American mainland (instead “discovering” the Bahamas, Cuba and Haiti), but
Columbus did enough to enhance his reputation and made three more explora-
tory voyages by 1504. Later, nineteenth-century Catalan nationalists took the
navigator to their hearts – if he wasn’t exactly Catalan, he was the closest they
had to a local Vasco da Gama, and so they put him on the pedestal that they
thought he deserved.Awkwardly for the locals, the statue is actually pointing in
the general direction of Libya, not North America, but, as historian Robert
Hughes puts it, at least “the sea is Catalan”.
Columbus himself tops a grandiose, iron column, 52m high, guarded by lions
at the base, around which unfold reliefs telling the story of his life and travels –
here, if nowhere else, the old mercenary is still the “discoverer of America”. On
the harbour side of the column, steps lead down to a ticket office and lift, which
you ride up to the enclosed
mirador
at Columbus’ feet. The 360-degree views
are terrific but the narrow viewing platform, which tilts perceptibly outwards
and downwards, is emphatically not for anyone without a head for heights.
The Drassanes and the Museu Marítim
Opposite Columbus, set back from the avenue, are the
Drassanes
, unique
medieval shipyards dating from the thirteenth century. Originally used as a
dry dock to fit and arm Catalunya’s war fleet in the days when the Catalan-
Aragonese crown was vying with Venice and Genoa for control of the
Mediterranean, the shipyards were in continuous use until well into the
eighteenth century. The basic structure – long parallel halls facing the sea –
has changed little; its singular size and position couldn’t be bettered, whether
the shipbuilders were fitting out medieval warships or eighteenth-century
trading vessels destined for South America.
The huge, stone-vaulted buildings make a fitting home for the
Museu
Marítim
(daily 10am–8pm; €6.50, free on afternoon of 1st Sat of month;
T
933 429 920,
W
www.museumaritimbarcelona.com;
o
Drassanes). The
centrepiece is a copy of the sixteenth-century Royal Galley (
Galera Reial
), a
soaring red-and-gold barge which was originally constructed here and was
present at the great naval victory over the Ottoman Turks at Lepanto in 1571.
This aside, it’s really the building that’s the main attraction, since the rest of the
exhibits – fishing skiffs, sailing boats, figureheads, old maps and charts, ship
THE WATERFRONT: FROM PORT VELL TO DIAGONAL MAR
|
Plaça Portal
de la Pau and around