| grade | easy |
| base camp | Barcelona |
| location tags | Barcelona, Barcelonès, Barri Gòtic, Barrio Gótico, Born, Eixample, Ensanche, Gothic Quarter, Paseo de Gracia, Passeig de Gràcia, Ribera, Want to advertise your casa rural or hotel on this page? Talk to us now. |
| walking distance | 6 km / 3.73 miles |
| walking time, excluding breaks | 3 hr |
| total return travel time from base camp to walk | 0 hr |
| total time from "hello" to "goodbye" | 4.05 hr |
This walk is popular with cruise passengers, weekend visitors, and other folks with a limited time budget. You’ll see the main sights in local style with expert commentary and without feeling like a dork. That means no flag-waving, parrot-reciting, pidgin-English-speaking, state-approved guides, and no luxury tour buses with dozens of sweaty folks from whichever delightful part of the planet you call home.
Your tour starts with a walk round Barcelona’s Roman, medieval and subsequent remains, including the cathedral and the other two principal Gothic churches and our favourite Romanesque church (tourist-free, and with one of the prettiest Virgins north of Granada), the site of the Jewish quarter up till the massacres in the 14th century, several key locations in the 1937 fighting between Stalinists and anarchists/Trotskyists documented in George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia and several others featured in Carlos Ruíz Zafón’s Shadow of the wind, the scenes of executions and other civic mayhem, and a number of unusual shops and bars. We then segue uptown by municipal bus to take in the famous houses on the Paseo de Gracia (Amatller, Batlló, Pedrera) and then head finally by bus or metro to the Sagrada Familia.
Because this is about people as well as buildings, we’ll be more than happy to introduce you to a couple of interesting (licensed) establishments en route, and our customary weird shit guarantee applies. On leaving the Sagrada Familia, if you want, we will deposit you at one of a choice of variously-priced restaurants just in time for lunch.
This is the default recipe. If you want something slightly different within the same 4-hour package, tell us and we’ll suggest a tweak. We don’t take you round the inside of the cathedral, the Sagrada Familia or the houses on Passeig de Gràcia. Please tell us if you want to see any of these and we’ll suggest ways of beating the queue and still doing the walk. Bear in mind that we also offer other Barcelona city walks.
| your group | |
| number of people (including yourself) in your group | This is the total size of the group - you won't be sharing with a couple of dozen strangers like on other city tours. |
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