La Rambla
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It is near-inevitable that one of the first things any visitor to Barcelona does is stroll along La Rambla, the magnificent mile-long walkway that cuts through the middle of the old city and leads down to the port. Neatly reversing the modern urban relationship between pedestrian and vehicle, it has often been described as the world's greatest street, and it is certainly the definitive stroller's boulevard.

A Rambla is an urban feature unique to Catalonia, and there is one in most Catalan towns. Originally, the Rambla of Barcelona, like many of its smaller equivalents, was a seasonal river bed, running along the western edge of the 13th-century city, the name the writing from the Arabic word for river bed, ramla. From the Middle Ages to the baroque era a great many churches and convents were built on the other side of this river bed, and some have given their names to sections of it: as one descends from Plaça Catalunya, it is successively called Rambla de Canaletes, Rambla dels Estudis, Rambla de Sant Josep, Rambla dels Caputxins and Rambla de Santa Monica. Hence, it is often referred to in the plural — Rambles, or Ramblas in Spanish and English.

The Rambla also served as the meeting ground for city and country dwellers, for on the far side of these church buildings lay the still scarcely-built up Raval, 'the city outside the walls', and rural Catalonia. It thus became a natural marketplace. From these beginnings sprang La Bouqueria, Barcelona's largest market, still off the Rambla today.

La Rambla took on its recognizable present form roughly between 1770 and 1860. The city wall came down in 1775, and the Rambla was gradually paved and turned into a boulevard. Seats were available to strollers for rent in the late 18th century. The avenue acquired its definitive shape after the closure of the monasteries in the 1830s, which made swaths of land available for new building. No longer on the city's edge, the Rambla became a wide path through its heart.

It used to be said that it was an obligation for every true Barcelona citizen to walk down the Rambla and back at least once a day. Nowadays, many locals are blase about the place, and the street has been well-taken by the fast food industry, but it remains one of Barcelona's essential attractions.

... Sights of the Rambla are the 24-hour newsstands, offering the Spanish and international press and huge quantities of porn. You'll also see buskers, clowns, human statues, puppeteers, dancers, and musicians working the length of the walkway, some licensed by the Ajuntament and 'Rambla regulars'. There's street theater of another kind in the shape of the three-card sharpers or hustlers with three walnut shells and a pea under one of them, challenging you to a bet. There's the portrait painter and the caricature painter and the poet selling his wares. In short, all human life is there — along what García Lorca called 'the very spirit of a city'.

from Time Out Guide Barcelona

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