Tibidabo: the mountain at the top of the city
The gilded Christ, a 1928 plane that still flies, and the whole city dropping away to the sea. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. Avinguda Tibidabo (FGC)
The FGC line drops you at the foot of the avenue, by *Plaça John F. Kennedy*. The historic *Tramvia Blau* used to clank up from here; it has been closed since 2018, so the climb is bus 196 to *Plaça Doctor Andreu* or a walk up a long, handsome avenue of modernista villas.

2. Plaça Doctor Andreu
The terrace where the avenue ends and the mountain begins — café tables, the old funicular station, the city already well below you. Catch your breath here; the *funicular* leaves from the same square.

3. Funicular del Tibidabo (Cuca de Llum)
Four minutes up the mountainside in the glass-sided *Cuca de Llum* (firefly), reopened in 2021 — 275 metres of climb with the city unspooling behind you. It runs on park-opening days, so check the calendar before you go.

4. Temple del Sagrat Cor
Enric Sagnier's expiatory church, built across sixty years to 1961, with the bronze Sacred Heart on top. Take the lift inside the crypt to the terrace, then the stair up the tower to the balcony under the statue — the highest you can stand in Barcelona without wings.

A propeller-driven plane that has swung out over the edge of the mountain since 1928 — a replica of the first aircraft to fly Barcelona to Madrid. You don't have to ride it. But it's the oldest thing here still doing its one beautiful trick.

6. Tibidabo summit & the Talaia
The amusement park wraps the summit, the *Talaia* tower turning slowly above it. Walk to the seaward railing for the payoff: the whole city laid flat to the Mediterranean, the *Sagrada Família* a toy in the middle of it.

Tibidabo: the mountain at the top of the city