Hostafrancs Market
A hundred-year-old market that supplied the city’s working-class hub
Halfway along the Sants district’s main commercial thoroughfare is a market established in the 19th century to cater to the area’s industrial growth. Hostafrancs Market, which has retained its traditional form, was built at the height of the city’s demographic explosion to supply the area that was growing up around the factories in the old town of Santa Maria de Sants.
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Why visit Hostafrancs Market?
Hostafrancs, which is located on one of the main commercial streets in the Sants district, is one of Barcelona’s oldest markets and still retains the classic structure and traditional flavour of its period.
The market, which was designed by the architect Antoni Rovira i Trias, was opened in 1888 to provide a permanent home for the street vendors who sold their goods to the working-class families whose influx had enlarged the district. The three structures of the market, which are in exposed brick over a metal shell, provide ample room for more than 90 stalls selling food, clothes and household goods, and even a bookshop.
How do you get to Hostafrancs Market?
The Creu Coberta stop on the Red Route of Barcelona Bus Turístic is located at the entrance to the market.
For the most curious of you
- Did you know? Josep Pla, one of the 20th-century’s best Catalan writers, said that to properly know a city you need to visit its market and its cemetery.
- Local’s tip: If you take a walk round the area, behind the market you will find a small neo-Gothic Jesuit church that was also built at the request of the district’s residents: the Església de l’Àngel Custodi de Barcelona (Church of the Guardian Angel of Barcelona).
- A must: To buy everything you need for a picnic at any one of the parks in the Sants-Montjuïc district.
