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The great fairytale Barcelona is one of the best walking cities in the world. Wide boulevards, lush green spaces at every turn, and beautiful architecture throughout, it’s easy to walk and walk for hours, stopping only for the occasional tapas refill. With so much to see and such a rich history, your visit to Barcelona may have been significantly enhanced with an in-depth walking tour. Tours, led by expert local guides, are available with all kinds of topics in mind: architecture, art, history, as well as interactive elements such as tapas tastings or professional photographers who will give you photographic advice as you stroll. With so many great options, it’s not about whether you should take a tour (or more than one), but which one is right for you. Take a look at some of our favorite tours below.
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Best Food Tour: Barcelona Tapas Night Tour
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Tapas are the tasty one-bite appetizers that are at the center of Spain’s legendary pub food scene. They are ubiquitous in Barcelona, and each bar offers more tempting snacks than the last, but there is a good art to ordering them, and locals know what to order where and what drinks to pair with which snacks. Demystify the experience by heading out for your first tapas tour with a local expert. This tour, centered on La Rambla and the Gothic Quarter, includes a visit to a center of gastronomic specialties, gourmet markets and several tapas bars for tastings, during and between which your guide will explain the history of Spanish and Catalan food and It will give you some ideas about other aspects of the neighborhoods you pass through. It’s a great way to learn about the common ingredients you’ll see on tapas menus,
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Best Photography Tour: Barcelona Photography Tour
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Barcelona is more than just photogenic: this beautiful city frankly begs to have a photo taken at every turn. This walking tour pairs you with a professional photographer who will not only guide you between some of the most attractive places in the city, but will also help you use your camera, offering advice on how to frame a shot and use the light to your advantage. . The tour covers a wide variety of locations, so you will have the opportunity to practice shooting many different types of shots.
On the record: Port Vell, where you can catch fishing boats floating in the sea; La Boqueria food market, where they attract lots of beautiful products; the El Born neighborhood, full of murals and street art and interesting people; and, of course, many Gaudí buildings, with their organic grandeur and striking details. At the end of the 3.5 hour tour, you will have a spectacular handmade souvenir to take home.
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Best Historical Tour: Barcelona Jewish Quarter Walking Tour
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The history of Barcelona is best thought of in the plural: countless individual stories, told over the centuries, of individuals and groups who have found their way to this remarkable place, usually for the better, sometimes for the worse. Studying the general history of the city is fascinating, but immersing yourself in a more specific history can open your own window and lead you to a deeper understanding.
This tour takes you through the oldest continuously occupied area of the city, the Jewish Quarter of Barcelona, where you will see one of the oldest synagogues in Europe, a recently excavated medieval mikvah (ritual bath), and the house of the Rabbi Shlomo ben Aderet, known as Rashba, a prominent medieval scholar of Judaism. Along the way, you will learn stories of the people who lived, worked and prayed in these places and how their history fits in with the larger history of Barcelona, Spain, Europe and the world. This fascinating tour lasts approximately two hours and ends at Plaça de Sant Jaume.
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Best Architecture Tour: Modernism Small Group and Gaudi Walking Tour
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Enjoy the personalized attention and flexibility of a small group on this walking tour that focuses on Barcelona’s most famous architect, Antoni Gaudí, and some of his contemporaries and modernist followers. You will visit a café where Gaudí once was a regular, you will stroll along Passeig de Gracia, you will see some of the most famous houses that Gaudí designed (Casa Calvet, Casa Mila and Casa Batlló) and you will see other modernist buildings designed by architects. like Puig i Cadafalch and Domench i Montaner.
After exploring the city center (which also includes some Catalan snacks and hand-dipped chocolates), hop into a taxi and head to the world-famous La Sagrada Familia, the magnificent sand castle-like cathedral designed by Gaudí and still in building. (expected completion: 2026). The tour is kept outside the cathedral, examining only the facades and exterior architectural elements, but ends here, so if you want to enter the cathedral, you can do it alone or with an enhanced tour.
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Best art tour: Picasso museum experience in Barcelona
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Picasso was not born in Barcelona, but he spent what was perhaps the most formative decade of his life here, from his teens to his early 20s. This tour takes a holistic view of Picasso’s life in Barcelona, visiting places where he studied and painted, but also cafes and salons where he would spend time with other members of the city’s fertile artistic community. You will see El Quatre Gats, a café frequented by Picasso (along with Gaudí and other famous names), as well as the art school where a young Picasso studied at the urging of his father.
After a stroll through the artsy neighborhood of La Ribera, you’ll find yourself at the world-class Picasso Museum, where skip-the-line access allows you immediate entry. Your guide will show you through the museum collections, which focus on the artist’s early and developmental works, offering perhaps the most distinctly human look at Picasso of any museum dedicated to him in the world. Your tour concludes at the museum, where you can continue exploring on your own, if you wish.
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Best literary tour: walking tour of the book «The shadow of the wind» in Barcelona
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Many people first fell in love with Barcelona on the pages of Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s 2001 international bestseller, The Shadow of the Wind , which sold more than 15 million copies worldwide. The novel, which takes place in a fantasy version of 1940s Barcelona, is a story within a story that features dozens of real-life locations throughout the city. This tour focuses on those: the beautiful Santa Maria del Mar, Els Quatre Gats Cafe, as well as the locations for the fictional cemetery of forgotten books and the Sempere and Sons bookstore. Along the way, your guide, an expert in literature from the nearby university, will explain the general and literary history of Barcelona and point out other places of interest for book lovers: old and new bookstores, stationery shops and pen stores, libraries and homes. of other authors and literary figures. It’s a fascinating window into the city and a must-see for fans of the book.
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Best gay-friendly tour: walking tour of the gay-friendly old town in Barcelona
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Barcelona is famous for being LGBTQ + and has long been a vacation destination for gay couples. You will find that most bookstore tours are gay friendly and this tour is welcome to everyone, but if you are looking for a Barcelona walking / history tour that includes significant amounts of homosexual history (and where your guide will also be a good resource if you are looking for additional sites of interest to the gay community), this is the tour for you. The three-hour walking tour covers an important part of the oldest parts of Barcelona, visiting the Gothic Quarter, the Ciutadella Park, the modernist castle of the Three Dragons and the Catalan Parliament. This is a private tour and your guide will meet you at your accommodation, so you will have great flexibility to cater for the tour based on your own personal interests,
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Best Morning Tour: Barcelona Gothic Quarter Tour in the Morning
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Get up and get closer to them on this morning walking tour, which begins at 9:30 am at Plaça Sant Jaume, in Barcelona’s historic Gothic Quarter. The two-hour tour explores this medieval region of the city and all its corners. You will see the ancient Roman walls, the old synagogue of Barcelona, the Roman temple of Augustus, the chapel of Santa Agata, the medieval royal palace and much more.
Because this neighborhood is particularly rambling, it’s really wonderful to have a guide to help you get your bearings, while also teaching you about the history of the city and these specific buildings and locations. If you can, bring a map (or put pins on your phone’s map) so you can find your way back to the sites of particular interest – there will be a few, and the geography of the ancient city will rarely be mastered in a day.
Continue to 9 of 9 below.
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Best Night Tour: The Dark History Walking Night Tour in Barcelona
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Although Barcelona looks like a fairy wonderland, its history is not entirely pleasant. Far from it, in fact. This small-group tour introduces you to the darker side of the city’s past. You’ll walk through the old city at dusk, starting from the Arc de Triomphe and ending at the El Born Cultural Center as your guide recounts stories from the Spanish Inquisition, public executions, medieval torture, and much more. It may not be pretty, but it’s all true, and the setting, with the darkness falling on the Gothic buildings, makes it even more real. Particularly brutal content isn’t really kid-friendly, so the recommended age is 14 and up. This tour is fully wheelchair accessible.
