Parc de la Ciutadella

Parc de la Ciutadella is where Barcelona goes to breathe. Its history is a story of liberation: after the city fell in the siege of 1714, the victorious Bourbon king Philip V demolished a large part of the Ribera neighbourhood to build a massive star-shaped citadel, designed as much to control Barcelona as to defend it. For a century and a half it was the most hated building in the city. When the citadel was finally handed back and pulled down in the second half of the nineteenth century, the land became a park, and in 1888 it hosted Barcelona's first Universal Exposition, which launched the modernista era. The architect Josep Fontserè laid out the gardens, and his monumental Cascada — a Baroque-style fountain of rocks, statues, gilded horses and a triumphal arch — is the park's showpiece; a young Antoni Gaudí, still a student, worked on it as one of Fontserè's assistants. Other exposition survivors include the Castell dels Tres Dragons, a red-brick café-restaurant by Domènech i Montaner, and the elegant glasshouses of the Hivernacle and Umbracle. Today the park is a mix of formal and relaxed: a boating lake where you can hire rowing boats, lawns full of picnickers and jugglers, buskers and drum circles at weekends, the Catalan Parliament in the old citadel arsenal, Barcelona Zoo in the south-east corner, and a life-sized stone mammoth that children climb on. At the northern edge, the Passeig de Lluís Companys leads to the Arc de Triomf, the red-brick gateway built for the 1888 exposition, a favourite spot for photographs and an elegant entrance to the park.

The park is free and open daily, and it sits in an ideal position, wedged between El Born, the Arc de Triomf, the Olympic Village and the beach. That makes it the natural place to pause between sights: a picnic of Boqueria or Santa Caterina market purchases on the lawns, a rest under the palms after the Picasso Museum, or a sunset walk before heading to dinner in El Born. Weekends bring a lively, very local scene, with families, musicians, tightrope walkers and impromptu dance classes. Bikes and scooters are common on the paths, so keep children close.

Visiting well: start at the Arc de Triomf, walk down the palm-lined promenade into the park, admire the Cascada (climb its stairs for a view over the lake), hire a rowing boat if the weather is kind, then visit the mammoth and the glasshouses. The zoo is a separate paid attraction, useful for families on a long stay. The Catalan Parliament occasionally opens for public visits. The park is busiest on weekend afternoons; mornings are calm and lovely for a run. As with all busy public spaces in Barcelona, keep an eye on belongings. Look out, too, for the details that most visitors walk past: the iron-and-glass Hivernacle and the slatted-wood Umbracle, two nineteenth-century plant houses beside the old natural-science buildings; the Castell dels Tres Dragons, Domènech i Montaner's red-brick castle built as the exposition café, an early manifesto of modernisme; and the statues and monuments scattered among the palms, which reward a slow, unhurried loop rather than a dash to the fountain.

Beyond the park, the Passeig de Lluís Companys and the Arc de Triomf lead north into the Eixample, while the Born Centre de Cultura i Memòria, on the park's western edge, tells the story of the neighbourhood that was demolished to build the citadel, a perfect complement to a park visit. The beach at Barceloneta and the Olympic Port are a fifteen-minute walk south-east. For first-timers, the Ciutadella is the place to slow down: no ticket, no timed slot, just the Barcelona of locals at leisure.