Walk it with the app
Pick a quest, follow the compass, check in at each stop. No account needed to start, no ads, no subscription.
Sant Martí takes in Poblenou, once called the Catalan Manchester for its factories and chimneys. Many of those factories are now lofts, museums and design studios, while the Torre Glòries and the new Glòries park mark the city’s newest face. Along the sea runs a string of beaches — Bogatell, Mar Bella, Llevant — opened in the run-up to the 1992 Olympics, and at night the old warehouses turn into clubs.
From the quest: The Catalan Manchester
Sixty metres of brick that never worked.
A 60-metre brick water tower raised between 1880 and 1882, for decades the tallest thing in Poblenou, built to pump water from the Besòs river to a rapidly industrialising district. It later stood inside the Can Girona foundry — the works that became Macosa. Today it holds the Poblenou Historical Archive and an observation deck.
From the quest: Barcelona from the Geyser
The only 360° observation deck in the city.
Ride to the 30th floor of Jean Nouvel's shimmering tower — the former Torre Agbar — to the Mirador, Barcelona's only true 360° observation deck, 125 metres up. From a single glazed ring the whole city unrolls at once: the Eixample grid, the Sagrada Família, Montjuïc, the Collserola ridge and the sea, with the 22@ district's new towers rising directly below.
From the quest: The Catalan Manchester
The city's oldest working graveyard.
Barcelona's oldest cemetery still in use, opened in 1775 as the first burial ground built outside the medieval walls. Napoleon's troops destroyed it in 1813; it was rebuilt to an Italian architect's neoclassical design and reconsecrated in 1819. Modest niches face grand bourgeois mausoleums across the same paths — the whole social order of the industrial city, carved in stone. Humblest of all is El Santet — Francesc Canals Ambrós, a shop assistant who died in 1899 aged 22 having given his wages to the poor. Believers still leave candles, letters, flowers and toys at his niche and post written petitions in a letterbox before it; legend says he grants wishes, but never ones about money. His shrine has spread to some twenty niches as families gave up their own.
A small sample. In the app, each stop unlocks when you reach it — with a detail most visitors miss.
Culture & History
Views & Photo Spots
Foodie Trail
Nightlife & Fun
Beach & Chill
Pick a quest, follow the compass, check in at each stop. No account needed to start, no ads, no subscription.
