La Barceloneta & Parc de la Ciutadella Free Tour

The Arc de Triomf was built as the grand gateway to the 1888 Universal Exposition, and it opens onto ground with a much darker past. Parc de la Ciutadella sits where Philip V built a military citadel to keep watch over Barcelona after the city fell in 1714 — a fortress locals despised for over a century, until it was finally demolished and reborn as a public park in the 1870s. Its centerpiece Cascada fountain was built with the help of a then-unknown architecture student named Antoni Gaudí, years before the finished park became the showpiece grounds of the 1888 Expo.

From there the walk continues to La Barceloneta, the grid-planned fishing quarter built to house the families displaced when the citadel went up. Once a working port neighborhood of narrow lanes and drying laundry, it's now home to Barcelona's most famous city beach — reshaped for the 1992 Olympics and still lined with seafood restaurants serving the catch.