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Image: Barcelona - Gaudi - La Sagrada Familia
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There's nowhere like Barcelona – no city in Spain can touch it for sheer style, looks or energy. For all its outrageous architecture, designer shopping, hip bars and vibrant cultural scene, Barcelona is more than just this year's fad. It's a confident, progressive city, tirelessly self-renewing while preserving all that's best about its past. As neighbourhoods are rebuilt with panache, and locals and visitors alike pursue the latest sensation, there's also an enduring embrace of the things that make life worth living – the daily market visit, strolling down the Ramblas, a lazy harbourside lunch, frenetic festival nights, Sunday by the beach or FC Barcelona's next big game.

Barcelona is perhaps best characterized by a remarkable fusion of economic energy and cultural expression, as epitomized by its glorious modernista (Art Nouveau) buildings, and the work of Antoni Gaudí in particular. The city also boasts a stupendous artistic legacy, including galleries devoted to Catalan artists Joan Miró and Antoni Tàpies, and a showcase Pablo Picasso museum.

Most sights of historic interest are in the ciutat vella, or old town, with the modern city beyond a late nineteenth-century addition. Much of what you'll want to see – Gothic cathedral, Picasso museum, markets, Gaudí buildings, history museums and art galleries – can be reached on foot in under twenty minutes from the central Plaça de Catalunya, while a fast metro system connects with more peripheral attractions.

The kilometre-long. tree-lined, largely pedestrian Ramblas splits the old town in two. On its eastern side is the labyrinthine Barri Gòtic (Gothic Quarter), with the Sant Pere and La Ribera neighbourhoods further east. To the west lies the edgier, artier district of El Raval. At the bottom of the Ramblas is the waterfront, whose spruced-up harbour area is known as Port Vell. Walking east takes you through the fishing and restaurant quarter ofBarceloneta, past city beaches and the Parc de la Ciutadella and along the promenade to the cafés and restaurants of the Port Olímpic.

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