Barcelona - What you should visit in Barcelona (Europian travel guide)

Barcelona Travel Guide — How to Visit Barcelona on a Budget

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This has a separate entry fee, but if you are interested in seeing how he lived, is worth the visit. This has timed entrances, helping to keep the park more pleasant for everyone to visit. You can visit parts of the park without a ticket, but the key attractions, known as the Monumental Zone, do require a ticket.

Holders of the Barcelona City Pass can also pre-book their timed entry to Parc Guell online, and entry is also included as part of this card. And that sums up our second day of exploration in Barcelona! But first, we start with the:. What better way to start the day than with chocolate? Barcelona was one of the major ports for chocolate to arrive into Europe, and it played a key role in the economy of the city.

Also fun are the many chocolate statues and displays made of chocolate. Definitely a fun way to start a full day of exploration in Barcelona! This is the oldest part of the city, and has some of the highlights of Barcelona tucked away. Whilst wandering the Gothic Quarter is an experience of itself, there are a number of attractions within that you should check out. First of these, coming from the Chocolate Museum, is the excellent Picasso Museum , which celebrates the early part of the artists life and work, as well as housing some of his later work.

A must for fans. This is free to enter, and worth popping into. Depending on your interests and how much time you have, you will probably want to pick a few of these rather than try to rush around all of them. This huge fortress has played a key role in the history of the city over the last few hundred years, serving as a Spanish control over the potentially unruly Catalan city, as well as a prison and execution centre.

3 Days in Barcelona: The Perfect Barcelona Itinerary

Today the castle is open to visitors and you can wander the huge walls, take in the views across the city skyline, and think back to darker times. This is a huge open air architectural museum, built in , which consists of full-size buildings representing fifteen different regions of Spain, many of which are replicas of actual buildings. Again, you could spend a few hours just wandering around here as there is a lot to see and do.

It also regularly hosts concerts, gastronomic festivals and other events. An imposing building with a spectacular view over the city, the National Museum of Catalan Art MNAC is a must-visit for anyone with an interest in the art of the Catalonia region. It has art of various styles from across the centuries, including an impressive collection of romanesque church paintings.

You can also take the lift to the top floor to wander on the roof, which offers excellent views of the city. The last entry on our final day of our three day Barcelona itinerary is the Magic Fountain , which you can see from the steps in front of the National Museum of Catalan Art. This fountains runs a spectacular sound and light show in the evenings which is a real treat to watch as the water displays synchronise with the sound and light. The schedule depends on the time of year — you can see it here. If you have a bit more time in Barcelona, or simply want to swap a few things around in the itinerary, the below items should definitely be in your list.

We took advantage of the free walking tour, and chose a three hour tour around the highlights of the Gothic Quarter and Las Ramblas. This was an excellent way to learn a bit about the history of the city and see some of the main attractions with a local. These were designed to be large enough to accommodate a horse drawn carriage, with one door being for entering the building, and the other for exiting. This latter place is a popular spot to see the sunset, depending on when you visit. You can even sit in the seats the coach sits in during the game! Jess and I actually really enjoyed this visit, despite neither of us being huge football fans.

If you do decide to visit, we definitely advise coming early as it gets very popular. Although fans may want to also catch a game here. Camp Nou is free for holders of the Barcelona Pass, and there is a small discount for holders of the Barcelona Card. Dating from the 19th century, and the earliest green space in the city, this acre park has plenty of green space — perfect for a picnic, or to grab a breather from all your exploring.

Built for a private owner between and , the home is still occupied by a private owner, so only certain parts of the property can be visited, although this does include the spectacular attic and roof areas which were the highlights in my mind. I particularly enjoyed visiting the roof terrace, which has spectacular views over the city, with the bonus that the whole roof is designed to look like a dragon. Guided tours currently run on weekends, and there are also audio guided tours available.

See times and languages on the official site here. The only part of the church to be completed was the crypt area, although this feels more like a church than a crypt, with a full nave, altar and pews. Entry is free with the Barcelona Pass, and you get the audioguide as part of your entry too.

And that sums up our suggested itinerary for three days in Barcelona!

These work a little differently, and depending on what you want to visit, you might find one works better for you than the other. If you plan to visit everything on the main itinerary above, the Barcelona Pass is a must.

Plan Your Barcelona Vacation

This is a cheaper option, and whilst it does offer free admission to a number of attractions, the majority of its benefit comes in the form of free public transport including the airport train and a range of discounts on popular attractions. Click here for Park Guell tickets , and here for Sagrada Familia tickets.

This pass includes both the Sagrada Familia and Parc Guell, and it lets you pre-book a timeslot for both of these, which is essential to a smooth queue free visit. It also includes the airport bus transfer, hop on hop off bus, and discounted admission at the majority of the sites in this post. So, which card to go for? Barcelona is easy to get around, with an extensive bus, metro and light rail network.

If you are going to use public transport, the most cost effective way to do so is the ten ticket T10 card, which lets multiple travellers use the same card. This is much cheaper than buying individual tickets and also lets you change transport options within an hour and fifteen minutes of starting your journey. First, if you purchase a Barcelona Card or a Barcelona Card Express , you get free travel on the metro, buses, trams and trains for the duration of the card.

This includes the airport metro and train. Our preferred option when booking accommodation is booking. It's housed in a 17th-century mansion and what it lacks in facilities no pool, no gym it makes up for in style and location — just next to the cathedral, it could not be more central. Its terrace on an atmospheric little square and its leafy rooftop bar are extra pluses.

The common areas are clean and elegant, and there is a leafy terrace. W inter can throw up some azure skies and improbably warm days, while summer — though humid — is not as blisteringly hot as other Spanish cities. Spring and autumn are the safest periods, perhaps, weatherwise, though they are the most prone to sudden showers, particularly around October and November.

The period from late-July to early-September is a strange one — most locals with the means to leave town do, which makes for a quiet, traffic-free experience but it also means that most restaurants are closed and cultural events are thin on the ground. The busiest period is Easter, when prices of flights and hotels are correspondingly high. Drivers are required to keep a fluorescent gilet inside the car, to be worn if they break down or have an accident on a busy road and need to get out of the car they come as standard with hire-cars. Glasses or contact lens wearers are legally required to keep a spare pair in the car though this is rarely enforced.

T he Spanish can seem very abrupt, and use 'please' and 'thank you' minimally. There is little sense of personal space here, but that can mean that, for example, people will greet and say goodbye to strangers when they enter or leave a lift. You can buy it at any of the participating venues. Dial 00 34 for Spain from abroad.

Barcelona weather essentials

There are area codes 93 for Barcelona but they must always be included, even from within the Barcelona area. After stints living in Seville and Madrid, in Sally Davies settled in Barcelona's El Born, a stone's throw from Ciutadella Park and the Santa Caterina market, two of her favourite places anywhere. T elegraph Travel's best hotels, tours and holidays in Barcelona, tried, tested and recommended by our Barcelona experts. We urge you to turn off your ad blocker for The Telegraph website so that you can continue to access our quality content in the future.

Visit our adblocking instructions page. Home News Sport Business. Perhaps the most striking element of the building is its rooftop, whose plunging stairways and lifelike chimneys evoke an otherworldly landscape. In ancient times, Passeig del Born was where citizens congregated for celebrations and sporting events.

Taste Everything at La Boqueria

Like a less-touristy version of Las Ramblas, this tree-lined promenade is lined with bars of all types. Kites fly, vendors call, music hums, waves crash— La Barceloneta is all about the action. It boasts the highest capacity in Europe and can seat nearly , spectators. Its clean lines, symmetrical marble slabs, and frameless doors lend a peaceful airiness to the building, designed by German architect Mies van der Rohe and presented at the Barcelona International Exposition. The edifice left such a lasting impression on Barcelona citizens that 24 years after the original structure was dismantled at the close of the event , an exact replica was built in its place.

In fact, when Christopher Columbus returned from the New World, it was here that the Catalan-Aragonese monarchs received him. Gargoyles, flying buttresses, and barrel vaults accent this classically Gothic structure, and you can enjoy them from above—along with the city skyline—on a rooftop tour. Crisscrossing Barcelona on foot can be tiring. To rest your legs, scout out a shady corner of Parc de la Ciutadella, a lush 19th-century park built over the previous site of a military citadel.

Best Restaurants in Barcelona.

Then catch some live music at Milano Cocktail-Bar , a favorite jazz haunt, or at Sala Apolo , popular among trendsters for its indie and electronic shows. Beer, wine, and locally bottled vermut make optimal sidekicks.

Sitges, 25 miles south of the city center, is the Catalan equivalent of Provincetown or Fire Island, an LGBT-friendly beach paradise with bumping nightlife. Its main beach, La Barceloneta, is out of the way and not particularly rave-worthy. Taste Everything at La Boqueria. Marvel the Santa Maria del Mar.

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