Carrer Gran de Gràcia: The Old Country Road
Why is it significant?
You are back on Carrer Gran de Gràcia, the long main street of the old town, by the entrance to Fontana metro station. Notice how the street bends gently as it climbs, unlike the ruler-straight avenues below. It was never planned. It simply follows the old country road.
Key Facts
| Place | Carrer Gran de Gràcia: The Old Country Road |
|---|---|
| Address | Carrer Gran de Gràcia, at Fontana metro, 08012 Barcelona, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 41.40210, 2.15300 |
| Part of Walk | Gràcia, the Village Inside Barcelona: Squares, Rebels and Gaudí's First House |
| Generated | Generated |
You are back on Carrer Gran de Gràcia, the long main street of the old town, by the entrance to Fontana metro station. Notice how the street bends gently as it climbs, unlike the ruler-straight avenues below. It was never planned. It simply follows the old country road.
For centuries this was the route from the gates of Barcelona up towards the convent of the Josepets and on to the villages in the hills. Wealthy city families built summer houses along it, with gardens and orchards, to escape the heat and the crowding inside the walls. In the nineteenth century, workshops, small factories and workers' housing filled the gaps, and a scatter of summer retreats became a dense, noisy, working town.
Look up at the façades as you walk: balconies with curling ironwork, carved window frames, decorated cornices. Several of the finest houses along this street are attributed to Francesc Berenguer, the unsigned genius of the market and the town hall, and once you know his style you start seeing it everywhere.
Under your feet runs a piece of transport history. At the end of December 1924, Barcelona opened its first metro line, the Gran Metro, running from Plaça de Catalunya up beneath Passeig de Gràcia and this street to Lesseps, and Fontana was one of its stations. Suddenly the former town was only minutes from the centre. Gràcia had resisted being absorbed into Barcelona in 1897; the metro made the union feel permanent.
Today Gran de Gràcia is a street of everyday shops, bakeries and pharmacies, and it keeps the neighbourhood supplied the way it always has. On Saturday mornings the narrow pavements fill with shopping trolleys, and neighbours stop to talk right in the middle of the flow. Now walk a little further uphill and turn left into Carrer de les Carolines. Watch out for a burst of green and white tiles: the first house Gaudí ever built.