Las Bellas de Barcelona

Blessed with rich and fertile soil, an excellent harbor, and a hardworking population, Barcelona has always prospered. When Madrid was still a dusty Castilian backwater, Barcelona was a powerful, diverse capital, influenced more by the Mediterranean empires that conquered it than by the cultures of the arid Iberian plains to the west. Carthage, Rome, and Charlemagne-era France overran Catalonia, and each left an indelible mark on the region's identity.

The Catalan people have clung fiercely to their unique culture and language, both of which Franco systematically tried to eradicate. But Catalonia has endured, becoming a semi autonomous region of Spain (with Catalan its official language). And Barcelona, the region's lodestar, has truly come into its own. The city's most powerful monuments open a window onto its history: the intricately carved edifices of the medieval Gothic Quarter; the curvilinear modernism (Catalan art nouveau) that inspired Gaudí's Sagrada Familia; and the seminal surrealist works of Picasso and Miró, in museums that mark Barcelona as a crucial incubator for 20th-century art.

Gaudí's Sagrada Familia and House that he designed.