25 min
25 min
35 min
L1 · L2 · L3 · L4 · L5
47.5 / km²
16
24
5,869
+21% vs city
Counted from OpenStreetMap and Inside Airbnb (CC BY 4.0)
Staying in Eixample
Eixample is the safe answer, and for once the safe answer is also the right one. Cerdà laid it out in the 1850s as a rational grid with chamfered corners, and the result is a district where every street is wide, well lit and predictable at night, which matters more than it sounds when you are walking back to a hotel at midnight in a city you do not know.
It carries the highest concentration of four-star hotels in Barcelona, and because they compete with each other, you get more room for your money here than in the old town. Passeig de Gràcia runs through the middle with Casa Batlló and La Pedrera on it. Sagrada Família sits at the eastern edge.
The catch is scale. Those blocks are 113 metres on a side, so 'two streets away' is a fifteen-minute walk, and the district reads as slightly corporate compared to Gràcia or El Born. Dreta de l'Eixample, the half east of Balmes, is the better side for a first visit; the western half thins out fast.
What works
- Walk to Sagrada Família and to the old town, both in under 25 minutes
- Quietest streets of any central district after 22:00
- Metro lines L1, L2, L3, L4 and L5 all cross it
- Best four-star value in the city, the hotels compete on price here
What does not
- Blocks are 113 m, so 'two streets away' means fifteen minutes on foot
- Very little is open on a Sunday, including most of the restaurants
- The western half past Balmes gets residential and dull fast
It's an enormous field of rectangular blocks in a continuously repeating layout, with the constant threat of getting lost