Barcelona's unique blend of the traditional and the modern fascinates over 4 million tourists every year. The old town features picturesque Gothic churches and narrow, winding streets as well as playful buildings constructed in a wide range of styles and materials.

Narrow, winding streets, atmospheric squares and a high concentration of magnificent buildings all lend the Gothic Quarter, the oldest part of the city, its character and charm. The town hall and the seat of the Catalan government, the latter an excellent example of Gothic and Renaissance style with its beautiful inner courtyards, face each other across the Plaça de Sant Jaume, which was once a Roman forum. Despite its colorful windows, the interior of the Gothic cathedral (La Seu) feels almost bathed in darkness. The Neo-Gothic façade was only completed in the 19th century, and the octagonal central tower was not finished until 1913.

For the 1992 Olympic Games, the entire waterfront area and the promenade all the way up to the fishing district, Barceloneta, were completely redesigned. The boats known as “Golondrines” set off on their tours around the harbor from the Moll de les Drassanes near the Monument a Colom, from the top of which you can see the whole coastline. The Rambla de Mar footbridge takes you to the Maremàgnum on the Moll d’Espanya jetty – a shopping and leisure center incorporating fashionable bars, tempting gaming rooms, wonderful shops and an IMAX cinema to take you to faraway worlds.

The 700-foot high Montjuïc to the south of the city center is one of two mountains in Barcelona, the other being Tibidabo. Avant-garde architects created the sports facilities for the 1992 Olympic Games on the plateau of the mountain by converting and adding to what was already there. Notable additions included the swimming stadium, the Olympic stadium and the Palau Sant Jordi. The Poble Español (”Spanish Village”) had already been built for the World's Fair in 1929. This leisure park, with restaurants and craft shops, also contains scaled-down copies of the country's main tourist attractions, including the town wall of Ávila, palaces in the Basque Country and houses in Aragón.

The Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (MNAC) is housed in what was originally the Spanish Pavilion for the 1929 World's Fair. Since 1934, the museum has been home to one of the most precious collections of medieval European art: paintings, board games, painted wooden ceilings, sculptures, altarpieces and chests.

The city’s most elegant street, which is home to some excellent buildings in the modernist style, is Passeig de Gràcia, right in the heart of the Quadrat d’Or (“Golden Square”). Artistically decorated streetlights, intricate mosaics on the pavement and expensive shops are all indicative of the exclusivity of the people of Barcelona at the beginning of the 20th century, and of their need for recognition. Some excellent examples of the Catalan variation on Art Nouveau can be seen in the collection of houses known as the Mançana de la Discòrdia (“Discord Block”) between Carrer Consell de Cent and Carrer Aragó: a typical mixture of Neo-Gothic, Italian, Flemish and traditional Catalan elements can be seen at Casa Amatller (no. 41), Puig i Cadafalch.

Las Ramblas is one of the most famous streets in Spain, where young and old, locals and tourists alike meet to chat or simply to sit and watch the world go by. The street stretches out over nearly three-quarters of a mile, and is lined with flower stalls, street theater, bars, musicians, monuments, magicians, painters, kiosks, restaurants and much, much more. Not far from the Plaça de Catalunya, a busy square with neoclassical façades, is the Palau Moià, a citizens' palace dating back to the 18th century, with murals by the Catalan painter Francesc Pla in the main hall. La Boqueria (“the chasm”) is well worth a visit – this is the most famous market in Barcelona for fruit, vegetables and seafood.

One of Barcelona's most famous landmarks is the Templo de la Sagrada Família (“Church of the Holy Family”), to which Antoni Gaudí dedicated the last 16 years of his life, without ever completing it. In 1883, the 31-year old architect took over the monumental building project, which was financed by private donors and was designed to hold up to 15,000 people once it was complete. According to Gaudí’s plans, there was to be a five-aisle basilica with a three-aisle transept, topped by a total of seventeen 350-foot tapering steeples. To date, only four of these towers, the ones above the east and west portals, have been completed.

The 745-foot high Tibidabo is also known as the "Muntanya Màgica" ("Magic Mountain") and is very popular with the locals, especially on weekends. The Tramvia Blau is a nostalgic tram line built at the end of the 19th century. It goes past some charming Art Nouveau villas halfway up the mountain, where the funicular railway continues the journey to the very top. Visitors flock to the numerous picnic sites and to the Parc d'Atraccions. You can easily spend a whole day at the amusement park, with its Ferris wheel, roller coaster, merry-go-rounds, snack bars, miniature railway and much, much more.

In 1900, Eusebi Güell i Bacigalupi commissioned his friend Antoni Gaudí to design and build the garden city of Parc Güell – which was to become Gaudí’s most colorful architectural creation. The park is very extensive, so it is easy to escape the hordes of people around the famous buildings. Colorful shards of tile and ceramic have been used to produce countless imaginative mosaics on the roofs of the pavilions, adding an eccentric charm to the whole park.

Some 40 miles northwest of Barcelona, the rugged chalk cliffs of the Sierra de Montserrat (national park) tower over the Santa Maria Monastery, a national shrine for the Catalan people. As early as the Middle Ages, it developed into an important pilgrimage site after the legendary discovery of a statue of the Virgin Mary, and even today more than 750,000 believers every year still flock to see the “Moreneta” (“Black Madonna”), a foot-high figure of the Madonna and baby Jesus wrapped in a golden cloth. In 1808, Napoleon's troops burned nearly the whole place to the ground, and all that survived were the Romanesque church portal and the Gothic cloisters. But the entire monastery was rebuilt some 50 years later.