Plaça Espanya

Traffic circles a great stone fountain. Two tall brick towers stand like an open gate to a wide avenue. Behind them, far up the hill, a domed palace floats above stairways of falling water. Horns, footsteps, fountain spray: the sound of six streets meeting. You are in Plaça d'Espanya, one of the largest squares in Barcelona.

Almost everything around you was built for a single event. In 1929 Barcelona hosted the International Exposition on the hill of Montjuïc. The city needed a grand gateway to the fairgrounds, and architects planned this square as that gate. Hotels, exhibition palaces, fountains, and avenues appeared in only a few years. The fair lasted months; the square has organized this side of the city ever since.

The layout came from Josep Puig i Cadafalch, one of the leading architects of Catalan Modernisme, who also directed the wider exposition project. He imagined a round plaza where great avenues meet. Under your feet, metro lines and commuter trains cross in tunnels. Above ground, six roads pour their cars into the circle, and the traffic never really stops.

The central fountain was designed by Josep Maria Jujol and finished in 1929. Jujol spent years working beside Antoni Gaudí, shaping balconies and mosaic benches for him. His fountain here is classical and monumental, crowned with columns. Its sculpted groups celebrate the rivers of Spain. Few visitors cross to it, because cars circle without pause. Admire it from the edge of the square.

Now look at the two brick towers. They stand about 47 meters tall, and they copy the bell tower of Saint Mark's Square in Venice. The architect Ramon Reventós raised them as the formal entrance to the exposition. Everyone calls them the Venetian Towers. At night, lights trace their edges against the sky.

On the other side of the square stands a round building with horseshoe arches. This is Las Arenas, opened in 1900 as a bullring, designed by August Font i Carreras in a style that borrows from Moorish architecture. Patterned brick and pointed details decorate the ring. Crowds filled it for decades. The last bullfight took place in 1977, and then the arena fell silent.

The building slept for thirty years while the city argued about its future. In the end, the studio of the British architect Richard Rogers turned it into a shopping and leisure center, opened in 2011. Engineers kept the round brick facade and lifted it on a new base. A glass elevator now rises outside the wall to the roof.

Go up to that roof. A walkway runs the full circle of the building, open to the sky. From there you see the whole square at once: towers, fountain, palace, and hill. Sunset is the best hour up there, and the view repays the short ride.

Between the Venetian Towers begins the Avinguda de la Reina Maria Cristina. Exhibition halls line both sides, and Barcelona's trade fairs have met here since 1929. During big fairs, flags line the avenue and crowds fill the pavements. At the far end, stairs and escalators climb toward the palace, home of the National Art Museum of Catalonia.

At the foot of the palace waits the Magic Fountain, built by the engineer Carles Buïgas for the 1929 fair. On show evenings, hundreds of jets rise and fall with music and colored light. The schedule changes with the seasons and sometimes pauses in dry periods, so check before you plan an evening. Arrive early, because the closest steps fill up first.

The square is also a doorway to the region. Under it, metro lines one and three meet commuter trains that run toward the mountain of Montserrat. Airport buses stop here too. Behind Las Arenas spreads the Joan Miró park, where the sculptor's tall Woman and Bird rises above a small pool.

Come twice if you can. In the morning, the brick glows and commuters stream across the crossings. After dark, the towers stand lit, the fountain shines, and the palace burns gold on its hill. Photographers like the hour just after sunset, when sky and lamps balance. The same stones, two different squares.

A century ago, all of this was raised for one busy summer. The fair closed, but the gateway stayed. It kept directing people toward the hill, year after year, long after the flags came down. Great cities are made of leftovers that learned new jobs.