After the previous day’s Gaudi-athon we decided to head to the Barcelona Pavilion which was about an hour’s walk from our hotel to see the Barcelona Pavilion by the modernist architect Mies van der Rohe.
Gaudi’s work was part of “modernisme” a Catalan architectural movement that has its origins in the late 1880s & had been influenced by the art & crafts movement, as well as art nouveau. Like these other movements it was a response to the industrialisation that occurred in the nineteenth century, and tended to look nostalgically to the medieval period for design influences such as gothic architecture.
The Barcelona Pavilion
The Barcelona Pavilion could not be further from Gaudi’s work, there are no religious undertones, no longing for a re-imagined past, there aren’t even conventional walls. Originally built in 1928 (it was rebuilt in the 1980s) for the 1929 World Expo as the German entry. It was designed to show the world how Germany was modern, democratic & progressive, as opposed to Germany’s earlier pre-war Prussian militarism.
The pavilion is built around two reflecting pools. Some archi-geek-ery – Mies used chromed columns to make the roof seem like it was floating. The inner reflection pool has the sculpture “Dawn” by Georg Kolbe.While we were there there was an art installation of plants by the Brazilian artist Ciao Reisewitz.
The old town
From the Barcelona Pavilion we had wanted to head to Quimet & Quimet a tapas bar we had seen on a Jamie Oliver show, which was only a short walk away. But with Sunday trading definitely not being a thing in Spain, it was closed.
This is Carrier de Blai a popular street for Tapas in the El Poble-Sec neighbourhood – we were at least able to track down a coffee here.
From there we decided to head down to the port & then onto La Rambla which is the main Street.
This is the Santa Madrona gate which is part of the historic Royal Shipyard that dates to the 1200s, it’s now a museum. The guard is hiding a cigarette behind his back. Naughty.
We headed down to the port but we couldn’t get that far to see the boats.
The women’s America’s Cup was on when we were there. Clearly not everyone was stoked to have the America’s Cup.The rather heroic Christopher Columbus monument is at the start of La Rambla, to celebrate his first voyage to the America’s. Built in 1888 for the world expo, his brand has since become slightly more complicated.Having rambled La Rambla we headed through the old town’s maze like streets. We popped out of the alleyways into the Place Reial.Iglesia de San Jaime. The church is one of the oldest in Barcelona, a church has been here since 975. Pont del Bisbe, while the bridge looks medieval it actually was built for the same 1929 World Expo as the Barcelona Pavilion, as an effort to make the old town look more medieval.The former Royal Archive in the Palau de LlochinentBarcelona Cathedral, there has been a church in this location since at least 599, the current church dates to 1298. While the main portal & the windows are original, the spires & the tracery were only added between 1890-1914 to make the cathedral look more gothic.We couldn’t go to Spain & not have TapasGaudi’s Casa Batlló at night
Barcelona was brilliant, we definitely would have liked to explore more of Spain but our itinerary continually pushing us forward we head back to London the next day.
MM4.Travel 
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