We understand how Barcelona backpakers feel, when they have to leave their luggage somewhere unlocked, and also when they have to pay for keeping their things safe every day.
Forget about all these concerns at Barcelona Urbany Hostel - the budget accommodation ideal for Barcelona backpackers.
We are not only a young and new hostel in Barcelona, but a hostel that also understands what Barcelona backpackers expect from a perfect accommodation. Every guest gets a locker, free of charge, during their stay. It works with the same card key that is used for the room. You can leave your luggage and small things that you don´t want to have lost.
Get connected with your family and friends back home, and find information that you may need to discover the city.
Barcelona Urbany Hostel provides all means of connection to internet for free for young Barcelona backpackers.
You can find computers at our Barcelona Hostel’s common area on the 3rd floor, that you can use of free of charge. They support multi language function, office package and high speed internet.
We ask you for only one thing - when there are more people waiting to use the computer, please keep the using time within 30 minutes. :)
Our Hostel in Barcelona provides you with free wi-fi (available 24h) service, which has connection in all rooms and at the lobby. If you need internet connection, just tell our crews on the lobby - they´ll give you the password for connection.
Why pay for internet when you can have it for free? :)
Enjoy your trip at the most, staying with Urbany - the best Barcelona budget accommodation youth hostel!
Great chance to have fun with new backpacker friends you met in the youth hostel, and also the locals who came to have some fun, just like you!! :)
You may return back to the hostel at late night or early morning by Night Bus or taxi. Donñt forget to bring the location of Barcelona Urbany Hostel, so that you can return back safe.
Coming to Barcelona? :D Stay with us at Urbany Hostels! Barcelona Urbany Hostel, the best youth hostel for young back packers who are looking for budget accommodation, offers you a discount voucher. Book your room for 3 nights and stay for 4! (available until Feb 28, 2010).
How to get discount on your booking? Easy! Follow the steps. 1. Become a member at our Facebook Page: www.facebook.com/urbany.hostels 2. Print out the voucher from flickr: http://bit.ly/7N6IvH 3. Make a booking through our website: www.barcelonaurbany.com 4. On the last booking process from our web, mention "FACEBOOK OFFER" on the additional info part (on step 4), in "Comments for hostel". 5. Show your printed out voucher at your arrival to the staff at the reception. Our staffs will happily give you a notice about the discounted rate.
- Don´t forget to leave "FACEBOOK OFFER" before you confirm the booking! :)
Please note: - Offer only valid with booking made through our website www.barcelonaurbany.com - Voucher available until Feb 28, 2010 (28/2/2010) - One voucher valid for one person - Please print out the voucher and show when you check-in - Not cumulative with other offers
We believe the true backpacker way of life means not only travelling around the world, making friends and sharing nice experiences but respecting the planet we live in. Discovering other parts of this planet on foot, finding out other ways of life, being more conscious about the issues we share together living on this small planet - earth.
The Barcelona Urbany building project focus on environmentally friendly design and technology deployment. But what does it mean?
When talking about environment and waste, everybody has heard about the three "R's": Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. The engineers who participated in building the building of Urbany Hostel in Barcelona has looked at the possible impacts of the project and choose to introduce some of the most innovative practices and methods to not only inflict minimal harm but to help protect the environment:
· Using a noise level absorbing façade
· Using a rain water harvesting system
· Recycling and reusing 50% of the water
· Using energy efficiency installations and low consumption lamps
· Using a more environmentally friendly and less aggressive materials
If you stay with Barcelona Urbany Hostel, you´re not only saving your money, but are also participating in the protecting the environment.
We hope you are proud of being a part of our eco-friendly acts.
The Barcelona City Council shares some tips and stories about streets and plazas to visit in Barcelona.
Take the metro (Clot - Purple & Red Line / Encants - Purple Line), bus or a bike in front of Urbany Barcelona Hostel,
and you will be there in a few minutes.
The small squares and streets
The most charming corners of our city are its small squares, very often hidden away, like the Placeta de Sant Just or that of Sant Felip Neri, and alleys that still conserve the charm of ancient times, such as Carrer del Call, Carrer de Paradís and others no less representative of Roman and medieval Barcelona, or streets like Montcada, which was one of the city's noble arteries during the 14th century. To explore these places, we have to enter into the very heart of the old city.
At the core of this old town there are many captivating spots, full of history and tradition, as corresponds to a city whose oldest stones date back to times that are distant but also very close in the real presence of their architectural manifestations. We will understand and appreciate better these corners if we recall that the origins of present-day Barcelona lie in the small rise of the Tàber. The city gradually extended across the plain surrounded by the hills of Monterols, the Putget, the Creueta, the Carmel, the Muntanya Pelada and the Turó de la Peira. The tribe of the Laietans who settled there converted it into the ancient Iberian town of Laia, which doubled in extension after being conquered by the Romans, who gave it the name of Colònia Favència Júlia Augusta Paterna Barcino.
All cities have, among their most important thoroughfares - due to being vital arteries of communications, especially in large cities - a number of streets which are broad, busy commercial avenues, and which conserve a special attraction which is due, no doubt, to their past, which is not lost despite the modifications and remodellings necessary to adapt them to the changing times.
In Barcelona, this phenomenon is clearly seen in streets such as Passeig de Gràcia, and especially in Rambla de Catalunya. The terraces of the cafeterias give them life, together with the variety of traditional shops and the brightly-lit entrances to the modern commercial galleries. Rambla de Catalunya, which is 30 metres wide and runs from the Diagonal to Plaça de Catalunya, has conserved the elegance of its tree-lined central passage. At its crossroads with Gran Via we find a small illuminated fountain, with four putti figures riding dolphins.
And we must not overlook two monuments located at the beginning and end of the street: a bull and a giraffe, called Meditació and Coqueta, respectively, made by Josep Granyer in 1972. The installation of these figures was sponsored by the residents of Rambla de Catalunya. This thirty-metre-wide avenue that begins at the Diagonal and ends at Plaça de Catalunya has conserved the charm of its central tree-lined promenade.
Passeig de Gràcia was, at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, the residential centre of the highest ranks of the Catalan bourgeoisie. Few of their houses had shops on the ground floor in those days, but since 1925 many of these buildings have been transformed and now have commercial establishments at street level.
This boulevard follows the straight line traced by the old road from Barcelona to the village of Gràcia, which has long been absorbed by the expansion of the city. In 1827 this road was converted into a broad, tree-lined avenue. Unlike today, the central part was for the use of pedestrians. In 1853 gas lighting was installed. In 1848 an Italian landscape gardener planted along the edges a series of gardens which he called Tívoli, a name which is still conserved by the theatre in Carrer de Casp.
The modernist movement left ample testimony in Passeig de Gràcia, in buildings such as the Lleó Morera mansion , de Domènech i Montaner, the Batlló house, by Antoni Gaudí, and the Milà mansion, also by Gaudí. The section between the streets Consell de Cent and Aragó is notable for the contrast between the buildings by Enric Sagnier, in a modernised Louis XV style, and the neo-Gothic Amatller mansion,by Josep Puig i Cadafalch. This variation of styles has popularised this part of the street with the name l'illa de la discòrdia.
Passeig de Gràcia and Avinguda Diagonal are two arteries that have concentrated a great deal of traffic and commerce, and at the same time they are residential streets and the site of many restaurants, cinemas, commercial galleries, discotheques, cafés, and so on.
In the heart of the old city, with its many charming small squares such as Sant Josep Oriol, Sant Felip Neri, Sant Just, Plaça del Pi and Plaça del Rei, it's a surprise to come across the broad, modern space of the Plaça Nova, forecourt of the Cathedral of Barcelona , which precedes the Pla de la Seu, the small square at the foot of the cathedral steps.
In its origins, the Plaça Nova was one of the plains that formed outside the gates of the Roman city. In 1355 it became a square when the City Council decided to channel the waters from the Collserola hills to the Plaça de Sant Jaume. The square was finished in April 1358, receiving the name that it still bears. In recent times it was opened up to communicate with the Avinguda de la Catedral. The two Roman towers conserved here were completed and reformed during the 12th century, and several windows were installed In the 16th century. The present urbanisation of the square dates from 1991, and as a curiosity we can mention that it is under the protection of Saint Roc, the figure situated in one of the towers.
The Plaça de Sant Jaume (St. James' Square) joins, via the streets Jaume I and Ferran, two avenues as important as the Via Laietana and the Rambla. Due to its situation in the heart of the city, it has a historical past that stems from Roman times. It was originally the crossroads of the two thoroughfares (Decumanus and Cardo Maximus) which crossed the city from north to south (now the streets Llibreteria and Call) and from west to east (now the streets Bisbe, Ciutat and Regomir). The Plaça de Sant Jaume, flanked by the Palace of the Generalitat and the City Hall, adopted its present structure in 1840, and was inaugurated with the name of Plaça de la Constitució.
The Rambla is a boulevard that is transformed with the hours of the day and of the night. Few streets have such a marked capacity for changing their appearance, the rhythm of their life and even their smells and colours, depending on the season of the year and the time of day.
In addition to being a street that preserves almost entirely its original characteristics, it has had, like no other thoroughfare, a capacity to assimilate the traces of the many and varied events that have taken place here during the different periods of its history.
The Rambla is a street, and an experience, that remain in the memory.
The Plaça de la Sagrada Família has become a very important touristic and commercial nucleus. It is situated between two of the main streets of the Eixample: Carrer Mallorca and Carrer Provença. It owes its name to the Temple of the Holy Family , planned by Antoni Gaudí. The square has been remodelled since its beginnings in order to make it wider and to adapt it to the needs now imposed by the number of visitors to the church and of residents who inhabit this neighbourhood, in which there is the municipal market of the same name.
The Avinguda Diagonal cuts through the grid pattern of the Cerdà Plan and crosses the city at an angle from east to west, stretching from the seafront to the very edge of the city. This characteristic thoroughfare conserves buildings of great historical and architectural value and representative monuments of the history of Catalonia. Here we will mention the mansion of Can Terrades, also popularly known as the Casa de les Punxes (the 'house of thorns'), a neo-Gothic building situated between Carrer del Bruch and Carrer de Llúria.
The Quadres mansion, designed by Puig i Cadafalch in 1906 and currently housing the Music Museum , is one of several other constructions worthy of attention. It is situated between Via Laietana and Passeig de Gràcia.
An extensive section of this avenue is dedicated to commerce: large stores, shopping centres and famous-name establishments. It is also an area of restaurants and cafeterias, and of the offices of large official bodies and major corporations. The Diagonal, together with Passeig de Gràcia, is one of the most prestigious streets in Barcelona.
We must also mention the part occupied by the various faculties of the University of Barcelona and the Polytechnic. This area is known as the University Zone in which we can visit the Royal Palace of Pedralbes, with its large gardens open to the public.
This small square is one of the places that best preserves the character of traditional Barcelona, due to the fact that it has not suffered the decay of other old nuclei, nor the effects of progress that have stolen some of the charm of streets like the Ramblas or the Passeig de Gràcia.
The Square of Sant Just is a part that remained, in the 19th century, of the cemetery of Sant Just, in which, as tradition has it, Barcelona's first Christian martyrs were buried. Of special interest is the Gothic fountain at the corner of the streets of Palma de Sant Just and Lledó, which was commissioned by the freeman Joan Fiveller in 1367.
The fountain has received influences of the neoclassical period, but it conserves an image of Saint Just, some falcons alluding to the hunts of its founder, and the coats of arms of the king and of the city. At the corner between the streets Dagueria and Bisbe Caçador stands the Palau Moixó.
The Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes is one of Barcelona's main thoroughfares and also the longest, crossing the whole city from south-west to north- east. It has many buildings which are important for their architecture, for their history, and for being nowadays the homes of public institutions such as the University of Barcelona and the Catalan Health Institute. We should also mention the buildings of the Comèdia and Coliseum cinemas, old private mansions of considerable architectural interest. The Gran Via also contains the large hotels Avenida Palace , Havana Palace and HUSA Palace (formerly the Hotel Ritz).
The street of Sant Felip Neri and the square of the same name form a corner with a very particular atmosphere. The first time you walk down this Roman alleyway, it's a surprise to find that it ends in this small, quiet square.
The 'square', originally part of the cemetery called "de Montjuïc del Bisbe" ("the Bishop's Jewish Hill"), has a fountain in the middle which is the delight of everyone who contemplates the whole formed by the street, the square and the church bearing the name of the saint, and two Renaissance buildings: the Coppersmiths' Guildhouse and the Shoemakers' Guildhouse.
The coppersmiths' building was situated originally at Carrer de la Bòria but when part of this street was demolished to make room for the construction of Via Laietana, the guildhouse's façade was removed to Plaça (square) Lesseps. It was later re-transferred to its present site.
On the right-hand side of the square stands another Renaissance building: the Shoemakers' Guildhouse, which now contains the Antique Shoe Museum. The lion of St Mark, patron of the guild, may be seen on its façade.
The Plaça d'Espanya was urbanised in 1929, the year of the Universal Exhibition held in Barcelona. In the centre of the square is a large fountain designed by the architect Josep Maria Jujol, a collaborator of Antoni Gaudí, ornamented with sculptures in marble and bronze by Miquel Blay. The series of bare brick buildings are the work of Nicolau Maria Rubió i Tudurí, and served as a hotel during the Exhibition.
The reforms carried out in the succeeding years have gradually transformed the square, but it still retains the twin towers by Ramon Reventós that overlook the entrance to the Barcelona Trade Fair and to one of the ways to go up the mountain of Montjuïc, where you can visit the Acclimatisation Garden, the gardens named after Father Cinto Verdaguer , and Father Costa i Llobera , in addition to the one dedicated to the poet Joan Maragall.You can enjoy an extraordinary view of the whole city from many spots on the mountain.
Beside the apse of the basilica of Santa Maria del Mar , to the right, is the Placeta de Montcada, which leads to the street of the same name.
Few streets are capable of arousing in the heart of the people of Barcelona the same fascination for the past, due to its extraordinary wealth of artistic and historic treasures.
The street takes its name from the Montcada dynasty, who served the Counts of Barcelona for generations, finally becoming the leading power in the land in the mid- 11th century. The founding of the Monastery of Santes Creus marked the culminating moment of the family's history. They occupied most of the key positions of the country, and in their period of greatest splendour, Guillem Ramon de Montcada was appointed regent to the young Alfons II.
The mansions of the Carrer de Montcada were built at different times, and currently house institutions such as Omnium Cultural, in the Palau Dalmases, and museums, such as the Picasso Museum which occupies the Aguilar, Castellet and Meca houses. The Cervelló mansion is now occupied by the Maeght art gallery.
The mansion of the marquises of Llió, formerly the home of the Royal Academy of Letters, now houses the Textile and Clothing Museum.
Other buildings which are very interesting for their architecture are: the house with the tower with the trifoil window, the house formerly occupied by the Cradle of the Child Jesus orphanage, the house with the lattice window, the house with the large arcade and the house with the Tuscan gateway.
This space owes its name to the building of the University of Barcelona , designed by the architect Elies Rogent (1821-1897) in a style based on Catalan Romanesque. The façade and the entrance hall are inspired in the forms of the monastery of Poblet. The square is enlivened by the presence of students and by the fact of being the confluence of streets with busy commercial activity, namely Ronda Sant Antoni, Carrer Pelai, Ronda Universitat and Carrer Tallers.
The Plaça del Rei (the 'King's Square') is the most noble urban space of old Barcelona. At the rear is the façade of the Royal Palace which contains the exquisite Saló del Tinell banqueting hall.
To the right is the Palatine Chapel or Chapel of Saint Agatha and to the left the Lieutenant's Palace where, during some time, the Archive of the Aragon Crown was housed. Now this Archive is located at Almogàvers street.
To the right, at the corner of Carrer del Veguer, is the Clariana-Padellàs house, which now houses the City History Museum.
The Plaça de Catalunya is the centre of the city; it is the confluence of streets as important as Passeig de Gràcia , Rambla Catalunya , the Rambla and Portal de l'Àngel, all filled with multitudes of local people and visitors. This square has shops, cafeterias and banks, and is also a major centre of urban communications.
On 17th October 1986, thousands of people gathered in the square to hear the announcement name of the city that was to host the 1992 Olympic Games. The giant screen that was transmitting the nomination ceremony became the focal point of the historic moment of the proclamation of "la ville de... Barcelona" as the venue of the Games.
At the end of Carrer de Petritxol we find two small adjoining squares, first the Plaça del Pi, and alongside it the Plaça de Sant Josep Oriol. The Plaça del Pi has for some years had a pine tree like the one that existed there when the square was first opened up, and which gave it its name. Opposite the 15th -century Gothic church Santa Maria del Pi there are two interesting buildings, the Shopkeepers' Guild (1685) and the house of the Congregation of the Holy Blood.
As a curiosity, we will mention that the church Església del Pi is the home of the popular giant figures of the same name, which were recovered in 1960, as is recalled in a ceramic panel at the entrance to Carrer de Petritxol.
Every weekend the Plaça de Sant Josep Oriol is filled with a colourful painters' market. In the middle of the square there is a seated statue of the dramatist Àngel Guimerà, by Josep Cardona, which was installed here in 1983. There is also the 'new' Fiveller mansion, from 1571.
Carrer de Petritxol
Go down the Rambla turn left into Carrer de la Portaferrissa, and the second turning on the right is Carrer de Petritxol. This is a quiet, narrow street, enlivened by the small art galleries, long-established shops and typical 'chocolate rooms' and pastry shops, some renovated, where locals and visitors can enjoy delicious Catalan specialities. The writer Josep Maria Huertas called it a 'sweet' street, and it preserves as a treasure its oldest spots, which proudly display mosaics and ceramic panels with pictures of traditional customs.
Just off the left-hand side of the Rambla , as you go down towards the harbour, after Carrer Ferran, there opens up the plaça Reial, one of the spaces with most tradition and interest in the city, as a result of its configuration and the life that goes on there. Like many of the public spaces of the old town, the Plaça Reial occupies the site of a monastery, in this case of the Capuchin order. It was laid out in 1848 by the architect and town planner Francesc Daniel Molina.
This square, remodelled on several occasions, is now the meeting-point for a very mixed public, which finds here a space to sit and have a drink in the open air at the terraces cafés situated under the welcoming porches that so characterise it. In the centre of the square there is the 'Three Graces' fountain, with two lanterns designed by the young Antoni Gaudí.
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