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Barcelona's map, EXPLAINED
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Mar 27, 2025
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0:00
This grid is the neighborhood of Arshample. It's famous for these chamfered octagonal city blocks
0:06
And this is the windy streets of Barre Gothic or the Gothic Quarter in stark contrast to this beautiful systematic grid
0:14
This contrast tells the story of Barcelona's history as a city. So Barcelona is the capital of Catalunya, which is a stretch of sunny coastline and epic mountain ranges
0:34
Catalunya is well known for its Mediterranean lifestyle, its amazing food and its massive contributions to arts and culture
0:41
its own to legends like Messi, Dali, Caudi, Picasso. Barcelona's mix of mountains and oceans draw
0:49
millions of tourists every year. The city lies between the Bezos and Lobregat rivers to the south
0:55
and the north. The Mediterranean Sea is on the east and to the west lies the Serra de Colserola
1:03
This hill right here is called Montjuic and historians believe that in the middle ages
1:10
This referred to a Jewish cemetery. In medieval times, this hill was the site of a watchtower
1:17
In 1641, there was a castle built here. And in the 18th century, it was upgraded to the size it is today
1:24
And if we zoom out from Munzrik, you're probably seeing this big section of our Champler with the famous grid and these diagonal lines
1:34
And I promise we're going to get to those. But first we need to look at the Gothic Quarter because this is where the city began
1:43
2,000 years ago, before the city of Barcelona, there was a Roman city called Barsino
1:50
It followed the classic Roman grid design and was surrounded by walls
1:54
Plaza San Jaume is kind of where the original Roman Forum was
1:59
today if you go to the square you'll find the city hall and palau de la generalitat which is
2:05
the seat of catalonia's government plaza nova is kind of where the westernmost tip of the city was
2:11
if you go there today you can see four remaining towers of the wall that date back to the fourth
2:15
century and throughout this part of the city there are roman ruins everywhere just waiting for you to
2:21
find them. So these streets, kind of where the medieval city ends and the grid begins, is where
2:29
the old medieval walls of the Gothic Quarter used to run. This section was first built in the 13th
2:35
century and then they extended it in the 15th century to over here. You can see on this old
2:41
map next to this middle wall, there's this road that's much thicker than the others. This used to
2:46
be a stream that ran on the outside of the first wall. In the beginning it was kind of a sewage
2:52
runoff area that ran along a stream that came from mountains but then after they made the second
2:58
wall it dried up and it became a main street for the area. Because of how wide the street was it
3:03
just naturally became a main road. People started trading and holding events there and eventually
3:09
started building convents and theatres on this road. In 1776 they demolished this inner wall
3:15
and then they redeveloped this into a proper main road for the city
3:19
They called it La Rambla and they styled it to be similar to a boulevard you might find in Paris
3:25
Today, this is one of the busiest, most touristy areas of the city
3:29
The walk starting from Placide Catalonia going down to the waterfront is one of the classic introductions to Barcelona
3:38
Back in the 13th century, there was a little market held on the street
3:41
that eventually got shifted around and evolved to become what we know today as La Boqueria
3:47
which is the starting point for a food tour of Barcelona as well
3:51
La Rambla kind of divides the Gothic horta into its separate neighborhoods
3:56
You've got El Raval to the south and then La Ribera and El Borne to the north
4:01
So let's talk about the wall and this garden and the castle and how it got there
4:07
And to understand that we have to dive into a little bit of complicated history
4:12
Hi, welcome to my balcony and sparkling water break. Now, when I was researching Barcelona and Catalonia, I don't know if you know, but there's a little bit of controversy around what Catalonia is
4:27
I have no idea what that's all about, as I'm not a Spanish man or a Catalan for that matter
4:32
And here at Bright Trip, we mainly concern ourselves with travel, not politics
4:38
But politics are important, and even more important is understanding the news
4:43
And that why we super stoked that today sponsor is Ground News So Ground News is a website and app developed by a former nasa engineer that is on a mission to give readers an easy data and objective way of reading the
4:56
news okay so this is the ground news homepage let's take a look at a story that might interest
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some of us which is the boeing situation so here we can see the top news concerning boeing and here
5:08
we can see already there's an article that is underreported by the left and let's read this
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6:31
And let's get back to Barcelona. This is Spain in 1653. Well, it's not Spain
6:40
It's a map of the different kingdoms that would soon become Spain. Back then, this was the Principality of Catalonia
6:46
This was the Crown of Aragon. And this was Castile. Over the course of centuries and a series of royal marriages
6:53
all of these territories kind of got smushed together into one big thing known as the Monarchy of Spain
6:58
But each of these used to be separate places with their own cultural identities and languages
7:03
In the year 1700, Charles II, the then ruler of Spain, died without an heir
7:09
This left a power vacuum and started the War of Spanish Succession
7:14
which was the French Bourbons and the Austrian Habsburgs, who both had princes that were sons of Spanish princesses
7:22
So they all had equal claim to the throne. During this war, Catalonia sided with the Austrian Habsburgs
7:28
and the war went on for 13 years. And throughout the war, Barcelona was invaded and besieged and actually was bombarded from its own castle twice
7:39
In 1714, a 13-month siege by the French against the city ended and Barcelona fell to the Bourbon army
7:48
So now there's a new king, Philip V, and he was kind of being bossed around by Louis XIV of France
7:54
Louis XIV instructed him to clamp down on the Catalans because they were seen as this rebellious people
8:00
So what Philip did is he upgraded Castle Montjuic. He strengthened the walls of the city and he built a citadel right here
8:09
which at the time was the biggest fortress in Europe. They actually demolished half of the neighborhood of Larabera to make space for the citadel
8:19
which displaced thousands of people. The walls were both a physical and a legal chokehold on the city
8:25
Most of the land around the wall was declared firing range, which means construction was prohibited. And so the combination of these three military
8:34
institutions and the harsh laws against Barcelona kept the city confined for two centuries
8:44
So this little triangle area here is known as Barceloneta and most of it used to be underwater
8:51
until the city built Port Valle. In 1447 they built a wall that ran to a little sand island
8:58
called Mayans and this created Barcelona's first proper port even though it was a trading hub in
9:05
the Mediterranean for centuries. Before this ships had to send little rowboats out to go do their
9:10
business on the beach and so to the north of this wall over the years sand started building up and
9:16
this created the foundation that Barcelona was built upon. This neighborhood was actually built
9:21
to house the people that were displaced during the building of the citadel
9:28
By the time the industrial revolution rolled around, things started getting really cramped
9:33
The textile industry had started to boom in Barcelona You can see in this old picture all the smokestacks popping up all around the city and the industry had to compete with the residents for space
9:46
because they could only build inside of the walls. Eventually, the city had double the population density of Paris
9:53
which was a massive problem. It created loads of issues of hygiene, epidemics and disease
9:57
The city council had to answer to the central government in Madrid
10:01
which saw Barcelona as a military presence in the area and they didn't want to let go of the fortified walls
10:09
But this situation is also kind of what paved the way for Aixample to happen
10:14
because artificially for 200 years, all of this land around Barigathe was kept undeveloped
10:23
which is so unheard of for a city as old as Barcelona
10:27
After years of public outcry and protest, Madrid finally gave in and allowed Barcelona to tear down its walls
10:35
And now that the walls were demolished, you had all this open space where you could implement a modern, rational and hopefully future-proof city plan
10:47
So now the year is 1859 and the city of Barcelona runs a competition for urban development programs to figure out what they were going to do with all this space
10:57
This competition was initially won by Antoni Rubira y Trias And it looked very different to the Echample we see today
11:07
The streets were aligned with the shape of the Gothic Quarter And it had a more traditional idea where the rich people lived on the outskirts of the city
11:16
But before that could be implemented The central government in Madrid Swooped in and imposed a project designed by an urbanist called
11:25
El Defonce Serda Sardar was considered to be ahead of his time. At the time he had already completed a detailed
11:34
topographic plan of Barcelona as well as a demographic survey so he had a great base
11:40
to design a city plan off of. And this plan looked like this
11:47
This is the picture that we all know of Barcelona today. The obvious and most iconic aspect of the
11:54
plan was the strict grid layout for the city. This grid consisted of square city blocks with
11:59
chamfered corners which created these octagonal intersections. So Dar was obsessed with this idea
12:04
that in order for residents to be healthy there needed to be enough sunlight and air and green
12:10
space in the city. He implemented wide streets and height restrictions to make sure that every
12:16
part of the city was getting enough sunlight. Each of the blocks had interior courtyards that served
12:21
as communal areas and less than 50 percent of each block was allowed to have buildings on it
12:27
the rest being reserved for green space. And there was a handful of different standardized block
12:32
designs that could be mixed and matched around the city to create these unique corridors for people
12:38
air and sunlight to move around. But what we see on this map is not what Serdar had initially
12:44
designed. There was a lot of tension between the central government and the city council
12:49
and a lot of back and forth. They fought a lot of Sédar's proposals
12:54
and flat out just rejected some of them. And because of that, Eichample took a long time to build
13:00
It took 20 years for the first 250 hectares to be finished
13:04
with loads of modifications on top of that. The streets were narrowed
13:09
the buildings got higher and higher and eventually these open blocks were kind of closed off
13:15
to make space for more building and more lots that you could sell to people and develop and eventually these green interior courtyards most of them became parking lots
13:25
Serdar also proposed three avenues to connect Baragasic with Aichampleur but only one of the
13:31
three ended up getting built which was Via Laetana and that took more than 40 years to build because
13:37
they had to kind of fight people to demolish buildings that were hundreds of years old. So
13:42
So this road only got finished in the 1950s. So enough history
13:48
Let's actually take a closer look at Aixampleur to see how it's laid out
13:53
Okay, I mean, I did mess up. This is not called Barre Gothic
13:57
This is called the Siu Tatevela, which means old city in Catalan
14:02
But, you know. so instead of being laid out by the compass like aligning to north and south
14:15
Aixampleur was designed to run parallel to the ocean and the mountains and the first things you
14:22
see are the five main avenues that connect the different parts of the city Grand Via runs parallel to the shore through the heart of Aixampleur this one intersects with Passig de San Juan which connects Barigothic to the rest of the city The Avenidas Diagonal and Meridiana intersect the Gran Via diagonally at Plaza de les Glores Catalanes
14:42
And this was originally intended to be the heart of the city according to Serdar's plan
14:48
But over the years it ended up being a huge kind of ugly highway intersection
14:53
However the city is currently working to turn this into a huge green space and this is also
14:59
where you'll find Torre Gloris which is the famous bullet-shaped skyscraper. Avenida Parallel connects
15:05
Plaza de España to the seafront and it's named Parallel because it's unique in the fact that
15:11
it's the only avenue that runs parallel to the equator. On the left hand side you can find Sant
15:21
Antoni Market, which is a less touristy option compared to La Boqueria. Then of course there is
15:27
Sagrada Familia, which has a neighborhood named after it, which is the giant wonder of the world
15:33
designed by Gadi. And then there's also Fort Pieng, which is home to La Monumental, which was
15:38
the last remaining bullfighting arena in Catalonia. As Aixample grew over the years, it started
15:48
gobbling up all the villages around it and eventually they got annexed into Barcelona
15:54
Basically these are all these neighborhoods that aren't grid-shaped. If you're on holiday you'll probably go to Gracia to see Parque Guel which is the whimsical
16:08
complex turned park designed by Gaudi. So that's the bulk of the layout of Barcelona. Next let's
16:16
look at a few of the landmarks that have popped up in the city since Archampo has been built
16:22
most of which are connected to big events that have happened. The first one was in 1888. Barcelona
16:28
hosted its first ever universal exposition. This event was focused here, the Ciutadella Park
16:35
that demolished the old citadel and the avenue leading up to it was decorated with a triumphant
16:40
Arch. All of the fountains and ponds in the park are as a result of this exposition as well as the
16:48
Columbus Monument and the Castle of Three Dragons. 40 years later the city hosted another international
16:54
exposition and this time they decided to center it around Monjuic and Plaza de España. Plaza de
17:01
España originally was a square where they used to do public hangings but for this exposition they
17:06
completely redeveloped it and turned it into what it is today. There were so many buildings
17:13
constructed, I can't possibly list all of them here, and the city had to expropriate almost 100
17:19
hectares of land to make space. The main buildings that you'll notice is everything around Plaza de
17:25
España, including the Venetian Towers, and then Palau Nacional, the Magic Fountain, and the Spanish
17:32
village. In the same year they built the Olympic Stadium. Barcelona was bidding to host an anti-fascist
17:40
version of the Berlin Olympic Games that was going to happen in 1936. But unfortunately the Spanish
17:47
Civil War put a spanner in the works for that plan. Nearing the end of the 20th century the city
17:52
decided to double down on tourism. Barcelona, España. In 1986 Barcelona won the bid to host
18:01
the 1992 Olympics. This provided huge impetus and also money to revamp the city. When the city was
18:09
building all the infrastructure and doing all of the renovations for the Olympics, they took a very
18:14
long-term approach. All of this along the beach used to be industrial area, like derelict industrial
18:21
area. And for the Olympics, they demolished all of this and rebuilt it into this promenade. They
18:26
They created all of these artificial beaches, which is what Barcelona is famous for today
18:32
And just inland of this beach, they built the Olympic Village, which is today a residential area
18:37
And this Olympic Stadium that they built back in 1929 finally got to see its glory day
18:42
They turned this whole area into a giant sports complex. Port Val was completely overhauled
18:47
Barcelona Netto became a beautiful tourist destination. This was an absolutely monumental moment for Barcelona
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and the 1992 Olympics is seen as one of the most successful Olympics ever
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After the Olympics, Barcelona emerged as one of the world's top tourist destinations
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And that kind of brings us to today. There's a lot more developments happening at the moment
19:07
but hopefully this gives you an overview of the city. Thank you so much for watching
19:12
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