Montjuïc

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 futuristic Pavelló Mies van der Rohe was probably too far ahead of its time, and was torn down right after the Fair, only to be rebuilt in 1986 as a masterpiece of modern architecture. It is a work in the German Bauhaus style, characterized by its transparency, simple lines and cool feel. In the Fundació Joan Miró museum and study center, sculptures, textiles, paintings and drawings by the Barcelona-born artist are exhibited in airy rooms.

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