Barcelona hotels, restaurants, bars, attractions, and other useful stuff
Not the rodent-loving Disney, dummy – disseny is Catalan for design, and as Barcelona is a design hub, a museum of design is a fairly obvious choice. From furniture to fashion, decorative arts to graphic design, there’s plenty to see here. The Museu del Disseny also serves as the venue for some travelling exhibitions (we caught the brilliant ‘David Bowie Is’ here), so keep an eye on the schedule.
I feel a bit sorry for the residents of el Born. Where most Barcelona residents enjoy the benefits of a neighbourhood market, the discovery of ruins of the medieval city were uncovered during a renovation (one that was apparently going to use the space for a library), and the fabulous steel structure, designed by Antoni Rovira I Trias, is now used as the El Born Cultural and Memorial Centre with the ruins on display. It’s free to enter and actually quite interesting – there’s even a decent bookstore and a café.
El Museu Marítim de Barcelona isn’t exactly one of main tourist attractions in town – the fact that the official website is only in Catalan or Spanish attests to that. We’re not terrifically excited by scale model boats, but the place has its charms.
The building itself is magnificent, having served as a shipyard from the 13thto 18thcenturies, and the full-size reproduction of a galley from the 16th Century is also impressive.
The courtyard – there’s a café too – is a lovely cool spot on a hot day, and occasionally serves as a location for a weekend market.