Barcelona Guide
The waterfront
Barceloneta
There's no finer place for lunch on a sunny day than the Barceloneta neighbourhood, laid out in 1755 in a classic eighteenth-century grid, and bound by the harbour on one side and the Mediterranean on the other. The long, narrow streets are still very much as they were planned, broken at intervals by small squares and lined with abundantly windowed houses designed to give the sailors and fishing folk who originally lived here plenty of sun and fresh air. Some original houses feature a decorative flourish, a sculpted balcony or a carved lintel, while in Plaça de la Barceloneta survives an eighteenth-century fountain and a Neoclassical church.
A block over in Plaça de la Font is the stylish neighbourhood market, Mercat de la Barceloneta (daily except Sun), boasting a couple of classy restaurants. Barceloneta's many other seafood restaurants are found scattered right across the tight grid of streets but most characteristically lined along the harbourside Passeig Joan de Borbó, where for most of the year you can sit outside to enjoy your meal.
On the seaward side of Barceloneta, what was once a scrappy fishermen's strand is now furnished with boardwalks, outdoor cafés, showers, benches, climbing frames, water fountains and public art. Platja de Sant Sebastià is the first in a series of landscaped city beaches that stretches north from here along the coast to the River Besòs. On the spit at the harbour end, work is well underway on a marina, office and leisure development by Catalan architect Ricardo Bofill whose signature building will be a sail-shaped hotel providing a "balcony over the sea". In the other direction, a double row of palms backs the Passeig Marítim, a sweeping stone esplanade that runs as far as the Port Olímpic, a fifteen-minute walk away. On the way, you'll pass the Parc de la Barceloneta, a rather plain expanse enlivened only by its whimsical modernista water tower (1905), rising like a minaret above the palms. Just beyond, before the port, rises the dramatic latticed funnel of wood and steel that is the Parc Recerca Biomèdica Barcelona (PRBB), the city's biomedical research centre.