Castell de Montjuïc

Why is it significant?

Cross the bridge over the dry moat and stop at the thick, angled walls of the fortress, with the sea on one side and the whole city on the other. From up here every street of Barcelona is in range... and that, for most of its history, was precisely the point.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Cross the bridge over the dry moat and stop at the thick, angled walls of the fortress, with the sea on one side and the whole city on the other. From up here every street of Barcelona is in range... and that, for most of its history, was precisely the point.

The first fort was thrown up in 1640, in a matter of weeks, during the Reapers' War, when Catalonia rebelled against the King of Spain. In January 1641 Catalan defenders beat back a royal army on these slopes. The star-shaped fortress you see today was rebuilt in the eighteenth century, after Barcelona fell in 1714, and its guns were pointed as much at the city as at any enemy fleet.

There is one gentle story up here. In the 1790s the French astronomer Pierre Méchain set his instruments on these walls to measure the arc of the meridian between Dunkirk and Barcelona. That measurement became the basis of a new unit, the metre. Méchain found a tiny inconsistency in his own readings and, the story goes, it tormented him for the rest of his life.

The rest is darker. In 1842 the city was bombarded from this fortress to crush a revolt. In the 1890s anarchist suspects were held and tortured in its cells. In 1909 the educator Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia, the man the avenue of the Exposition is named after, was shot in its moat. And on the 15th of October 1940, Lluís Companys, the president of Catalonia, handed over to Franco's regime by the Gestapo in occupied France, was executed here by firing squad after a summary court martial. Accounts say he took off his shoes, to feel the earth of Catalonia, and refused a blindfold.

Since 2007 the castle has belonged to the city, and it is now a place of memory, gardens and wide views rather than guns. You began this walk in a bullring, passed a fairground, a museum and an Olympic stadium, all built to show Barcelona to the world. Up here, you see what the city survived to build them. Take a last look at the sea... and when you are ready, the cable car will carry you gently back down.