The best of Barcelona
The beautiful and popular beaches of La Barceloneta, Barcelona.
Choose from a hundred different restaurants, which many are over a hundred years old.
Experience a fantastic nightlife and a family atmosphere at one of the bars in Barceloneta.
Constructed by the Spanish army in year 1753 on a rectangular piece of land once reclaimed from the sea, the neighborhood Barceloneta was first built to provide housing for the families that were forced to move from the neighborhood Ribera. This due to the construction of the large military garrison named "Cuitadella" (today Cuitadella Park) that the Spanish King "Philip V" ordered to be built after the terrible siege and fall of Barcelona in year 1714. If you take a look at a map over Barceloneta you can see the perfect grid pattern and street layout that was carefully planned and built by the military. All the fifteen parallel streets that makes up the neighborhood are exactly seven and a half meters wide and the long streets that crosses them are each exactly nine point three meters wide.
Before being transformed into the popular and exclusive beach neighborhood that it is today, Barceloneta was first the home to many of the less fortunate and poor people of Barcelona, like the shipbuilders, fishermen and mariners. This was because they couldn't afford to live inside the great wall that surrounded Barcelona's old town, the Gothic Quarter. It took until the year 1846 and the start of Barcelona's industrial age for Barceloneta to become more popular to live in. This much because of the ban that didn't allow new factories to be opened within the city walls, which forced the company owners to open their new factories outside the walls and many of them in Barceloneta. And after a while the factory owners also discovered the neighborhood's strategic geographical position, with the proximity to the sea and port, and Barceloneta soon became an ideal location for all types of industry. Today you can still find the head office for one of Barcelona's oldest industries, the gas production industry, in Barceloneta.
Since the fall of the city walls, and thanks to the tram and public transportation being connected to the area, Barceloneta has in the last seventy years grown to become one of the most popular and exclusive neighborhoods in Barcelona. Today you can find hundred year old bars and restaurants next to new trendy clubs, gourmet restaurants and luxury hotels.
The name "Barceloneta" literally means "Little Barcelona" and you can still today hear locals refer to the neighborhood as the "village within the city".