Exploring Barcelona: Walking Les Corts

Les Corts is a local upper middle class neighborhood adjacent to Sants, Sarrià-Sant Gervasi, the Left Eixample, the mountains, and L'Hospitalet de Llobregat. Les Corts de Sarria is the oldest part of the larger Les Corts division of the city, with its center of beautiful Concordia Square. It is also the most affordable part of the neighborhood with larger apartment buildings on one block and older apartment buildings across the street; this is compared to the massive spaced out mansions that go up into the hills. This area was previously its own town before the growth of Barcelona’s grid towards it and its annexation by the city. Today, the neighborhood lies at the southernmost point in the city along with Sants and is bordered by the mountains above it. Les Corts is also next to Camp Nou and the section of Avenue Diagonal which is home to most of the offices in the city.

It is interesting the fact that, unlike in American cities, this office section of Avenue Diagonal does not stick out in the skyline and is surrounded by some of the most expensive neighborhoods in the city (for more on this read another blog post that I made about the Diagonal business corridor). When walking around Les Corts, one can also see a lot of adaptive reuse of old industrial buildings, where instead of tearing the buildings down, they are converted for other uses through modifications or additions to the structure. Because of this, the neighborhood is very interesting architecturally for its variety of residential building styles. I would definitely say that, if you are wanting to see what upper middle class Barcelona looks like, make a visit to the neighborhood, and if you want to see super upper class Barcelona make sure you get to the area by the hills above Avenue Diagonal.