Life in Barcelona

It has taken me a couple of years to discover it, but unlike the very famous ‘Boqueria’ open market just off the Ramblas, the Santa Caterina Marketplace is a little less known by the hoards of visitors and tourists in Barcelona and it is a lovely, lovely, lovely place!

Located just past the cathedral in the centre of the city, off Via Laietana and bordering the El Born district, this wonderhouse was originally created by the same architects who designed the Scottish Parliament building! The building is glorious! With a roof built like a huge basket of colourful fruits. The market has undergone a few years of refurbishment and the newly re-opened market is a vivid public space that most soulful city planners and big-spirited architects would dream of.

 The Santa Caterina market adds to the Barcelona architechtural scene as this is the city of Gaudi, the saintly patron of a much-admired urban culture that thrives on surrealism in architecture.

You HAVE to go to visit this market place and to FEEL it :-) Even if you think you do not need any shopping, you may find a trip to this place leaves you loaded with bags of fresh fish and seafood or with gleaming fruits and vegetables! To read more about the history of the market and about the building, visit the following page of The Guardian online!

The discovery of the market adds another place to my already long list of wonderful things to do with visitors in Barcelona in the summertime! Inside the building you will find the fashionable and fairly pricey Santa Caterina restaurant - just waiting to tickle my tastebuds and those of my friends and family with all of their FRESH and delicious dishes!

- Hege -

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 22nd, 2007 at 4:25 pm and is filed under Food & Wine, General Barcelona, Other, Shopping, Things to do. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.