What to see in Barcelona on foot

Barcelona
Photo: Diliff · CC BY 2.5

Barcelona began as Roman Barcino, whose wall still shows beside the cathedral, and grew with a Gothic old town, a Modernista extension shaped by Gaudí, Domènech i Montaner and Puig i Cadafalch, and a beach, Barceloneta, that barely existed before 1992. This guide brings together places from several areas, from the Barri Gòtic to Montjuïc and Barceloneta.

What to see

Barri Gòtic

La Rambla

A tree-lined promenade that Federico García Lorca made his own in the 1920s. Along it come the opera house, the market, the flower stalls and a Miró mosaic set into the pavement.

Catedral de Barcelona

A cathedral that keeps a martyr beneath its high altar. Thirteen white geese live in its cloister, one for each year of the saint's life, a custom that goes back centuries.

Escultura Barcino

A 1994 sculpture by Joan Brossa spelling out the city's Roman name in bronze, placed before the cathedral with the Roman wall behind: a visual poem about two thousand years of city.

Palau de la Generalitat

A seat of government that has occupied the same building for six centuries, something very rare worldwide. Pau Casals called its Gothic courtyard with orange trees “the most beautiful place in Europe”.

Sant Felip Neri

A quiet square where the church front still bears shrapnel scars. Forty-two people, many of them pupils at the neighbouring school, were killed here by an Italian bomb dropped on 30 January 1938.

Ajuntament de Barcelona

The Casa de la Ciutat, the seat of the city council since the Middle Ages. Behind its 1847 Neoclassical front survive the Gothic Saló de Cent, from 1369, and Arnau Bargués's Gothic façade on Carrer Ciutat.

Plaça Reial

An arcaded Neoclassical square with palm trees and the Three Graces fountain, built where a Capuchin convent once stood. Its lampposts were Gaudí's first public commission, at the age of 26.

Restos muralla Romana

Remains of the Roman wall that protected Barcino, the city founded in the 1st century BC from which Barcelona grew.

Basílica de Santa Maria del Pi

A Gothic basilica whose rose window ranks among the biggest in Catalan Gothic architecture. The church burned in 1936 and has been restored twice.

Carrer de Petritxol

A sweet-toothed street in the Barri Gòtic: Dalí drank chocolate here, Montserrat Caballé rehearsed here and medieval goldsmiths worked here beneath guild balconies.

Modernisme on Passeig de Gràcia

La Pedrera - Casa Milà

Gaudí's last civil building, built between 1906 and 1910. It stirred up so much controversy that the press mockingly nicknamed it La Pedrera, “the quarry”; today it is a World Heritage Site.

Fundació Tàpies

The first building in the Eixample with exposed iron, drawn up in 1885 by Domènech i Montaner as the home of a publisher. It is crowned by Tàpies's “Núvol i cadira”, a wire cloud with a chair.

Casa de les Punxes

Puig i Cadafalch designed this Modernista block in 1905, giving it six cone-topped towers that echo Central European castles. Commissioned by the Terradas sisters, it joins three buildings into a single urban castle.

Casa Amatller

A house with a neo-Gothic façade topped by triangular steps, in the manner of the houses of Bruges. The Amatllers made chocolate from 1797, and inside are the original chocolate workshop and the son's travel photographs.

Can Fanga: Barcelona antes de las baldosas

Before the ramblas and the panots arrived, this area was a mudflat, and its name still recalls it.

Casa Malagrida, la cúpula Art Nouveau

A house at number 27 on Passeig de Gràcia, designed in 1908 by Joaquim Codina i Matalí for Manuel Malagrida, an indiano who had grown rich in Argentina. It is topped by an Art Nouveau dome.

Eixample & Sant Pau

Sagrada Família

A still-unfinished basilica conceived as a tree of stone, where blocks have been laid from 1883 right up to 2026. The whole building can be taken in from the side by the pond.

Recinto Modernista de San Pau

A complex of towers, domes and mosaics that was built neither as a palace nor as a church but as a hospital, designed so that patients could recover surrounded by art.

El Born

Parc de la Ciutadella

A 17-hectare park on the site of the military citadel Philip V built after 1714 to keep the Catalans in check. It took the city 155 years to get it pulled down.

Mercat del Born

Barcelona's first iron market, from 1876, closed a century later. Digs in 2002 uncovered the streets razed after the city fell in 1714; it is now a cultural centre.

La Barceloneta

Platja de la Barceloneta

The most central and busiest beach in the city, which barely existed before 1992.

Torre del Rellotge

An 18-metre stone tower with a light and a clock since 1772, which set the pace of the fishing quarter. It was rebuilt after the Civil War.

Montjuïc

Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya

Housed in the Palau Nacional on Montjuïc, this museum's Romanesque wall paintings, saved from Pyrenean churches, form the most important collection of their kind in the world.

CaixaForum Barcelona

The former Casaramona factory of 1911, by Puig i Cadafalch, an example of industrial Modernisme. It served as a barracks for Franco's police and is now a cultural centre.

How much time you need

Citourfy has 12 walking tours in Barcelona, 25 min to 46 min each: each area can be done on its own, on different days or on the same one.

Getting to the starting point

When to go: festivals

Local festivals, in case you want your visit to coincide with one:

Barcelona audio guide

The app narrates each place as soon as you arrive, using your phone's GPS:

Download on the App StoreGet it on Google Play

Sources

The facts in this guide come from the same records as the audio guide and from these public inventories:

Facts checked on October 22, 2026.