Barcelona

Work began in 1882 and has not stopped. Only the Nativity facade stood finished when Gaudi died in 1926, and the central tower of Jesus Christ was topped out in 2026. Climbing a tower is separate from the basilica ticket and carries its own timed booking.

Laid out as a gated estate for sale, it folded when only two of sixty plots sold. Workmen pressed broken tile into the wavy bench, and the columned hall beneath was drawn as the estate market. The central zone is ticketed; the woodland paths are free.

Below the Placa del Rei the streets of the Roman town lie where they were left. Wine presses and the vats where fish sauce was cured still stand in position, so what this place lived on is written into the floor.

The stone front carries no load, which lets the walls inside be moved at will. The roof chimneys are ventilation shafts built as sculpture, and the attic is ribbed with brick arches that hold the roof. Some flats are still lived in and closed to visitors.

The guns of the hilltop fort face the city, not the sea. In 1842 they shelled the streets below. In the twentieth century it was a military prison where executions took place. The cable car passes over the container quays; walking up has almost no shade.

The sand was trucked in ahead of the 1992 Olympics; before that the shore held shanties and seafood stalls packed side by side. Summer weekends leave nowhere to sit, and even on calm days the water pulls towards the breakwater.

An inverted glass skylight hangs above the middle of the hall, so daytime concerts need no lamps at all. Mosaic and glazed ceramic cover the walls and columns until the hall out-shouts the stage. Outside concert hours you get in only on a timed visitor ticket.

Opened in 1901, it still turns a few rides from that era. The aeroplane carousel of 1928 gives you a handle to hold instead of a belt. On the ridge it runs cooler and windier than the streets. The winter calendar shrinks to a handful of days.

The pavilions are joined by gardens above and tunnels below, and the wards took patients until 2009. Rooms face south with high ceilings to give tuberculosis patients light and air, and a straight avenue reaches the Sagrada Familia in fifteen minutes.

Go up before the sun drops. The concrete platforms are all that is left of a civil-war anti-aircraft battery, the guns long gone, and nothing blocks the sea or the ridge. After neighbours complained of night noise, wardens clear the site at dark.

Gaudi remodelled an ordinary house on Passeig de Gracia from 1904. The balconies look like masks or bones, and scaled tiles cover the roof like a dragon's back. Casa Mila is a few blocks up the same street, so the two fit into one half day.

An iron-roofed market opening off La Rambla, packed with fruit, seafood and ham stalls. The juice stands by the entrance charge the most, and prices drop the deeper you walk in. The market shuts on Sundays.

The Gothic Quarter's cathedral, right at its core; its front was added as the 19th century closed. Thirteen white geese live in the cloister pond, one for each year of Saint Eulalia, martyred at 13. A lift goes up to the roof above the quarter.

A 14th-century Catalan Gothic church the waterfront parish raised in some fifty years. Port porters carried its stone on their backs from Montjuic, as the bronze doors show. Slim octagonal columns stand far apart, so the nave feels vast.

Five medieval mansions on Carrer Montcada joined into one museum. Much of it is work Picasso made in his teens, before his style set. His 58-canvas series reworking Velazquez's Las Meninas hangs together in one gallery.

Housed in the Palau Nacional on Montjuic, built for the 1929 exhibition. Romanesque murals were lifted off Pyrenean church walls and refitted on curved apses shaped like the originals. The terrace crowning the front steps overlooks Placa d'Espanya.

Laid out where an 18th-century fortress had been torn down, for the 1888 Universal Exhibition. Its great fountain carries gilded statues, and a student Gaudi helped with the design. The red-brick Arc de Triomf before the north gate is from the same fair.

A Benedictine monastery halfway up a saw-toothed mountain, a train ride of about sixty minutes from Placa d'Espanya. The final climb is by rack railway or cable car. A long queue forms on the side stairs to touch the orb held by the Black Virgin.

The townhouse Gaudi began in 1886 for his patron Guell, in a lane just off La Rambla. The central hall rises into a parabolic dome pierced with small holes that let light in like stars. The tiled chimneys on its roof came before the mosaics of Park Guell.

Gaudi's first house commission, tucked into a side street of Gracia. Rows of tiles painted with yellow marigolds cover the walls, under Moorish-style turrets. It has been a museum since 2017 and draws much thinner crowds than his downtown buildings.

Under an iron market hall from 1876, whole lanes and house plots of early 18th-century Barcelona came to light. The district was razed for a fortress after the siege of 1714. Near Santa Maria del Mar, an eternal flame in a small square honours its dead.

A white building on Montjuic by Miro's friend, the architect Sert, opened in 1975. Miro's paintings, sculpture and huge tapestries hang under natural light. Calder's mercury fountain still runs behind glass inside.

A convent of Poor Clares founded by Queen Elisenda in 1327 on the hills north of town. Its three-storey Gothic cloister survives intact. Murals in the small chapel off it were painted by Ferrer Bassa in 1346.

A noble family's late 18th-century villa garden, the oldest surviving garden in the city. At the centre of its clipped cypress maze stands a statue of Eros. Entry numbers are capped at any one time to protect it.

A tree-lined walk running 1.2km from Placa de Catalunya to the Columbus column at the port. Near Liceu station, a round Miro mosaic lies in the pavement and most people walk over it unaware. Pickpockets work this street, so wear the bag in front.

A cross-shaped iron market from 1882, reopened in 2018 after long works. Remains of the medieval wall and moat found during the dig can be seen below ground. On Sunday mornings a second-hand book, stamp and coin market rings the outside.

An arcaded square reached through an archway off La Rambla, with palms and a fountain. The six-armed lampposts were the young Gaudi's first job for the city. From evening on, the bars and clubs under its arcades stay busy late into the night.