The Sagrada Família and the Eixample grid
Gaudí's basilica, a tree-lined avenue, and the modernista hospital-city at the top of it. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. Sagrada Família — the Nativity facade
Come up the metro stairs on the *Carrer de la Marina* side and turn to the eastern front first. This is the facade Gaudí finished in his own lifetime — go before the queues, and buy the timed ticket online days ahead, never at the door.

2. Sagrada Família — the Passion facade
Walk anticlockwise around to the western front. Subirachs's angular 1980s stonework is colder, sparer, deliberately unlike Gaudí — stand back across *Plaça de Sagrada Família* to take in the towers rising behind it.

3. Plaça de la Sagrada Família
The little park on the Nativity side, with the pond that gives you the reflection shot everyone wants. A bench here is the best free seat in the *Eixample*; sit before you start the climb up the avenue.

4. Avinguda de Gaudí
The diagonal, pedestrian-friendly avenue that links the two great buildings of this walk. Plane trees, *modernista* lampposts, terrace tables — slow down and let it be the connective tissue it was designed to be.

5. Hospital de Sant Pau
Domènech i Montaner's hospital-city: not one building but a campus of mosaic-clad pavilions, a UNESCO site, and the quiet counterweight to the basilica. The art-nouveau interiors are worth the entry; the gardens between pavilions are the part people miss.

6. A chamfered Cerdà block
On the way to the metro, stand at any corner and notice the cut-off angle. Cerdà's 1859 grid lopped the corners off every block so carriages could turn and light could reach the street — the *xamfrà* is the quiet genius under the whole district.

The Sagrada Família and the Eixample grid