This is the genteel uptown — Sant Gervasi and La Bonanova, the belt of summer villas the nineteenth-century city built up the slope to escape its own noise. It's leafy, quiet, and slightly grand, and it ends at a small garden most visitors never reach. Three and a half kilometres, mostly downhill, best in the long afternoon light.
Start at La Bonanova on the FGC and take the square it's named for, then let the streets pull you down through Sant Gervasi. This is villa country: modernista and noucentista houses behind garden walls, the gates worth as much attention as the façades. Cross the Via Augusta, the quarter's busy spine, and keep dropping into the calm beyond it.
The walk lands at Turó Park, a 1930s garden of lily pond, clipped hedges and quiet sculpture — the loveliest small green in uptown, and reliably empty of anyone who didn't grow up nearby. Take the bench by the water.
From there Muntaner is a few streets down, the FGC back to the centre, and a pavement café for a drink if the light's still good.
