Most tourists think of Old Barcelona (Ciutat Vella) as synonymous with the Gothic Quarter (Barri Gòtic) – a maze of medieval streets and stone buildings, with La Rambla running down the centre.
It’s more complicated than that.
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Cuitat Vella (Old Barcelona)
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La Rambla (in red, above) actually divides a poorer and until recently what many considered a dangerous neighbourhood, the Raval (in green), from the the Gothic Quarter (in purple) and, beyond that, the trendy and more authentic Born (in orange). Details here.
Three hundred meters off La Rambla into Raval is Plaça dels Àngels, home to the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art – architect Richard Meier’s gleaming modernist composition in white (well, aren’t they all?), commissioned in 1986 before the museum even had a collection. The building and plaza are the Barcelona version of the decade-earlier Pompidou Centre in Paris: an attraction and open space inserted into the dense fabric of the city’s oldest section as part of a larger scheme of revitalization.
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It’s not clear whether the authorities or Meier expected that Plaça dels Àngels (map here) would become the intense centre of activity that has emerged, particularly for skateboarders – but it’s hard to find photos (or walk through the plaza) in which there are not youth on boards. This hard-surfaced, largely unobstructed space, with a long shelf perfect for boarding, seems designed for that purpose – and there are none of those little brackets to deter the skaters. Skating may be as significant a draw as the museum; it certainly adds more life.
Combined with the bladers, Bici bikers, strollers and runners, this is the City as Workout, Barcelona-style.
While you’re wandering through Raval, continue another half kilometre to the Rambla del Raval (map here) – the newest of the ramblas, developed in 1995 to give a green lung to one of the densest communities in the city.
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Just off Rambla del Raval is the not entirely successful Plaça de Vasquez Montalban (map here) with its elipitcal hotel, and off that, a small plaza and home to the new Filmoteca de Catalunya, filled with the Barcelona version of hipsters.
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Centro Comercial Glòries
Centro Comercial Glòries
I’m glad that skateboarders have found Meier’s otherwise dreadful and dead placa. There is a reason large buildings aren’t usually white in the bright Mediterranean sun. We simply baked trying to traverse the placa and also had difficulty finding the museum’s entrance. It’s no wonder that PPS includes this space – not place – in Its Hall of Shame.