Montjüic
We are now at Montjüic, that means something like "the jewish mountain" because there was a Jewish cemetery in the middle ages. Montjüic can be seen from almost the whole city. A lot of attractions are situated at this mountain and it has cableway connections with the harbour. A big part of the mountain became a park at the 1929 world fair and much of Montjüic was refurbished for the Olympics in 1992 and large sports arenas were constructed. It is situated 213m above sea level. We have to walk up all the stairs, or take the escalators, to come to Palau Nacional and Montjüic. The skyline views from the terrace of the palace are the best of northwest Barcelona.
Views towards
Placa d'Espana and Tibidabo from the top of Palau Nacional's stairs on the beginning
of Montjüic.
You can not only see Font Magica, the skyscrapers at Carrer de Tarragona,
Placa d´Espana and the 2 Campaniles, you can also see
all the way to the Tibidabo
mountain with its temple and its observation tower Torre de Collserola.
Does this statue´s foot
try to kick Sagrada Familia away from Barcelona? We now walk at Montjüic towards
Poble Espanol, an artificially constructed Spanish village with different Spanish
architecture styles. When there, we found out it cost a lot of money to get inside and we
consider it is not worth it -especially since the village has been criticized
for having lack of taste. The whole area looks small on the map, but is a long
way to walk in the sun back to the road. And finally, we reach Avinguda l'Estadi
to see the rest of Montjüic's attractions, that are located at this avenue.
Palau Nacional from the back.
Torre Montjüic, or Torre Calatrava as it also has been called because it was
designed by world famous
Santiago Calatrava. The tower is a symbol of a sportsman
with the Olympic flame, as it was designed
for the Olympics in 1992. Despite it
is 136 m tall, it looks very low from some angles. Calatrava´s
buildings was the
not only the last I saw of Copenhagen/Malmö(Turning Torso), it was also the first
I saw of Barcelona(Montjüic Tower) from the plane!
Palau Sant Jordi. Sports arena by the Japanese architect Arati Isozaki, built
for the Olympics in 1992. To the right of Palau Sant Jordi is Torre Calatrava
and to the far right in the background is Castell Montjüic from 1640. It was for
long a prison were political prisoners were tortured. It is now a military museum.
After being hungry like wolfs, we just found a small kiosk. The owner refused
to sell foods and told us there was no restaurant in the vicinity(that was a lie),
so we had to buy mini mini chips for €2!!!
Estadi Olímpic, the Olympic stadium. Built for the cancelled (because of the
civil war) workers Olympics in 1936, the stadium was heavily expanded to be able
to host all visitors of the Olympics in 1992.
The entrance to the stadium.
Fundació Joan Miró. Reaching the airconditioned Miró museum felt like reaching
an oasis in the desert. We could have lunch and even look at the Miró and some
of this works for free. We didn't have time and money to pay for the entrance,
wait in line and see the whole museum though. The sculpture on the photo is in
the museum´s garden.
Cableways take people up to the already mentioned Castell Montjüic, the highest
you can get on Montjüic.
From a swimming pool complex there was great
views over the city and the surrounding mountains:
When we finally reached the southeastern edge of the mountain,
we got nice skyline views:
The buildings
on these views have been presented earlier, except for the unusual "chimney house".
Standing just above
the entrance of the small cableways that go high above the city, from the 213
m at Montjüic down to Port Vell. At Torre Jaumei you can take the elevator down
to the WTC area, if you don't want to go all the way down to Port Vell. However,
we found the cableway too expensive (€8) and decided to walk down the mountain
and thus came to the Columbus statue and the harbour.
After a long, but shady and therefore pretty comfortable walk, we were on
the ground. We could soon see the harbour skyline.