Carrer de Petritxol — The Chocolate Street

Carrer de Petritxol is a historic 129-meter-long lane in Barcelona's Gothic Quarter renowned for its traditional chocolate cafés that date back to the seventeenth century. Originating in the fourteenth century as Goldsmith's Alley, the street became Barcelona's first pedestrian thoroughfare in 1959 and the first with electric lighting in 1881. It houses Sala Parés, an art gallery where Pablo Picasso held an early exhibition in 1901.

Barcelona · from the walk “Stones & Secrets: Hidden Courtyards of the Barri Gòtic” · audio ~4 min · Generated

Carrer de Petritxol, Barcelona

Why is Carrer de Petritxol in Barcelona known as the chocolate street?

Take a breath. You are standing on Carrer de Petritxol... Barcelona's sweetest secret. Just one hundred and twenty nine meters long and barely three meters wide, this tiny lane packs more history per square centimeter than almost anywhere else in the Gothic Quarter.......... How old is this path beneath your feet? Its origins stretch back to the fourteenth century, when it was known as Carrero dels Orfebres... Goldsmith's Alley. A century later, a house belonging to a man named Petritxol sat right in the Middle of the street, blocking passage entirely. The city eventually split the house in two just to let people walk through. That's how the street got its name.......... Now look around at the walls. You'll notice beautiful blue ceramic plaques adorning the buildings. These aren't just decoration... they tell stories of the people who lived and worked here across the centuries, written in Catalan verse.......... But here's the real secret of this street. Barcelona was one of the First places in Europe where cacao arrived from the New World in the sixteenth century. The port of Barcelona was the gateway for goods from the Americas, and Spain actually kept chocolate a closely guarded Secret for nearly a hundred years! The Spanish nobility treated it almost like... medicine. The royal physician to King Felipe the Second even claimed chocolate was an aphrodisiac.......... By the seventeenth century, chocolate shops began appearing on this very street, and the tradition never stopped. The word "granja" on those signs means "farm"... these cafés started as humble dairies selling milk products, then transformed into the chocolate temples you see today. Granja Dulcinea has been pouring thick hot chocolate since nineteen forty one, and none other than Salvador Dali himself used to sit on its wooden benches! Across the way, Granja la Pallaresa opened in nineteen forty seven and still serves its legendary Suizo... a cup of impossibly thick hot chocolate crowned with homemade whipped cream.......... And then there's the art! At number five, you'll find Sala Pares, the oldest art gallery in Barcelona, founded in eighteen forty. It became the headquarters of the Catalan Modernist painters... Santiago Rusinyol, Ramon Casas. And in nineteen oh one, a young, unknown artist exhibited his pastel drawings here for the very first time in a gallery setting. His name? Pablo Picasso. He didn't sell a single piece.......... One more thing... in eighteen eighty one, this became the first street in Barcelona to receive electric lighting. And in nineteen fifty nine, it became the city's First pedestrian street, long before anyone was talking about car-free cities. Carrer de Petritxol was ahead of its time... in every way.

Nearby stories