Avinguda del Tibidabo
A majestic avenue flanked by Modernista mansions
The only tram from 1901 that is still operating runs along a gardened avenue that is some 1.5 kilometres long and flanked by Modernista mansions. Following the annexation of the town of Sant Gervasi de Cassoles, a Barcelona doctor dreamt up Avinguda del Tibidabo, a place where well-to-do families could have their houses built. More than a hundred years later, this avenue takes you back to this bourgeois and stately time.
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Why visit the residential zone on Avinguda del Tibidabo?
Avinguda del Tibidabo was conceived of in 1897 by Doctor Andreu, who had dreamt of an elegant garden city in which powerful families could build their private mansions. The idea was to get away from the grids of the Eixample and from neighbours and factories and breathe the pure mountain air on Tibidabo.
The avenue, along which runs the emblematic Tramvia Blau, the only survivor of the old Barcelona tram line, has not changed its original physiognomy. From the roundabout, on the left you will see the Tamarita Gardens and higher up you will find Casa Coll, designed by Enric Sagnier, Casa Bernat i Creus, by Josep Pérez Terraza, and La Roviralta, which is now home to a restaurant and was built by Joan Rubió i Bellver, who also built Casa Fornells, which is right at the bottom of Tibidabo Mountain. Its other features include Casa Muntades, designed by Josep Puig i Cadafalch, and Enric Sagnier’s Casa Evarist Arnús, El Pinar, which is a neo-Gothic mansion that is lit up at night, and the doctor’s house Torre Andreu.
Now this avenue has become a site for universities, schools and consulates among other eminent buildings, but the urban layout of the street and the architecture of its buildings have remained intact. A trip on the Tramvia Blau along the avenue takes you back to a time when the city’s best architects vied with each other to build the most stylish and spectacular Modernista, mock-medieval, neo-Gothic and Noucentista homes and mansions.
How do you get to Avinguda del Tibidabo?
You can take the Tramvia Blau at the Tramvia Blau – Tibidabo stop on the Blue Route of Barcelona Bus Turístic.
For the most curious of you
- Did you know? At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War the house where Doctor Andreu lived, number 17, became the embassy of the Soviet Union, which had moved from Madrid to Barcelona for security reasons. In its basement a bunker was constructed with enough provisions to allow the embassy’s occupants to live and work for two weeks in the event of bombing. Once the war was over, the Andreu family returned home.
- Local’s tip: You can enter literary Barcelona here as this street is one of the settings of the bestselling novel "The Shadow of the Wind".
- A must: To follow the route of the Tramvia Blau and discover the well-to-do Barcelona of the early 20th century.
