Gràcia was its own town until 1897, and it has never fully forgiven the merger. The streets are too narrow for the Eixample grid next door, the squares too many and too small to be anything but local, and the result is the one part of central Barcelona that still feels like a village stacked on a city.
Start at the edge, at Casa Vicens — Gaudí's first house, all green tile and brick, the experiment before the cathedral. Walk in from there and the grid dissolves into lanes. Plaça de la Virreina comes first, the church-and-terraces square the locals still call Sant Joan; have your coffee here, not later. Then Plaça del Sol, bare and bright, best in the slow hour before the evening fills it.
Carrer de Verdi is the spine — bookshops, the cinema, the shops that haven't been replaced by chains. It feeds you down to Plaça de la Vila de Gràcia and the bell tower, the thirty-metre clock that once stood for the village against the city.
End at Joanic, one stop back into the grid. You'll understand, by then, why Gràcia keeps its distance.
