Barcelona

The story of Barcelona

Legend gives Barcelona's founding to Hamilcar Barca, Hannibal's father, and the Carthaginian family name survived Roman Barcino, whose 1st-century walls still poke through the Gothic Quarter. For centuries the city was the seat of the Counts of Barcelona and the engine of a Mediterranean trading empire under the Crown of Aragon.

Stripped of its privileges after backing the losing side in 1714, a defeat still marked every 11 September, Barcelona reinvented itself as Spain's industrial powerhouse. The 19th-century Eixample grid, with its chamfered corners designed by Ildefons Cerdà, became the canvas for Gaudí and the modernistes; the 1992 Olympics then turned the city to face the sea, building its beaches almost from scratch.

Curiosities: the Sagrada Família has been under construction since 1882, longer than the Great Pyramid took; Park Güell was a failed housing development; and the Boqueria market has fed the Rambla since medieval friars sold meat at its gates.