Barcelona guide

EIXAMPLE DRET DISTRICT. The Eixample district features the central Modernist architecture area for which Barcelona is so world famous. This is the true, modern central area in Barcelona, and from this location you can get easily everywhere in the city on foot or in public transport in the worst cases. In addition to the strong cultural sights in this area, there are also a number of stores such as municipal markets, supermarkets, designer shops and boutiques, as well as a number of outstanding Barcelona restaurants and tapas bars. The Eixample, which literally means ‘widening’ or ‘broadening out’, is the early twentieth-century Modernist residential and commercial area with its famous grid system of straight streets designed to accommodate the old city´s swelling population. Barcelona’s late nineteenth-century explosion of Art Nouveau, locally called Modernisme, found its home in the Eixample, today virtually a living museum of art and architecture. Splashed with color and form, the Eixample reflects the ambition and the taste, the grandeur and the grandiloquence of the turn-of-the-century Barcelona bourgeoisie. The quantity and the varieties of the architectural expression of Modernisme in the Eixample are nearly infinite. The façades, the stores and pharmacies, the ‘porteries’ or entryways, the inner courtyards, the passageways and the sculptures are all worthy of monographic studies. Its main avenue, Passeig de Gràcia, is considered to be one of Europe’s most beautiful avenues. In this street we find one of the two Eixample buildings declared world-heritage site by UNESCO in 1984: Antoni Gaudi’s La Pedrera. The other one is the Sant Pau hospital (declared world-heritage site in 1997), near Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia church. The Eixample is generally referred to in terms of Eixample Esquerre (the area lying on the left side of Passeig de Gràcia) and Eixample Dret (the area lying on the right side of Passeig de Gràcia). Gaudi´s iconic Sagrada Familia cathedral stands on the right side. The Fundacio Antoni Tapies, whose pioneering Islamic-inspired building hosts important temporary modern art exhibits, lies on the left.