Where to Stay in Badalona, Catalunya

What is Badalona known for?

Badalona began as a Roman town, and the Badalona Museum covers the excavated streets while the Balldovina Tower Museum stands alongside it, which makes the archaeology the first thing many visitors come for. Basketball is the second. The Pavelló Club Joventut Badalona and the Badalona municipal stadium give the city a sporting profile out of proportion to its size, and Màgic Badalona sits with them.

What are the main landmarks in Badalona?

Baetulo is the headline. The Badalona Museum takes visitors down into the Roman remains, and the Balldovina Tower Museum and the History of Immigration in Catalonia Museum hold the rest of the city's collections above ground. Sport has its own monuments.

The Pavelló Club Joventut Badalona, the Badalona municipal stadium and the Ciutat Esportiva Dani Jarque draw crowds that the Torre Mena, Casa Agustí and Casa Miquel Badia never will, while Parròquia de Sant Pacià and Can Guardiola keep the older fabric.

What is the history of Badalona?

Rome laid the first street plan. Baetulo was established on this coast, and what survives of it is held by the Badalona Museum together with the rest of the city's Roman record. The Zona arqueològica de la Sagrera marks another dig nearby.

Medieval and early modern Badalona left the Balldovina Tower Museum and a scatter of farmhouses, Can Busquets, Can Met, Can Muntlló and Can Pedragosa among them, that the modern city grew around instead of clearing. The nineteenth century turned Badalona industrial. Work drew newcomers in numbers large enough that the city keeps a museum for the subject, the History of Immigration in Catalonia Museum, and the story it tells runs through the tenement streets as much as through the factories.

City status came in 1897. Houses of that period survive as Casa Agustí, Casa Miquel Badia, Casa de l'Heura and Casa Enric Mir i Carreras, while Torre Mena carries the name of a whole quarter. Barcelona changed the scale.

Badalona sits inside the Barcelona metropolitan area with Sant Adrià, Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Sant Andreu de Palomar and Sant Martí de Provençals along the same stretch of coast, and the fourth-largest city in Catalonia reads as one piece of a much larger built-up whole.

Where is Badalona?

Just over 21 square kilometres run down to the water. Badalona lies north east of Barcelona on the left bank of the Besòs, with the Mediterranean along one whole side of the municipality and the built-up ground of the Barcelona metropolitan area on every other. Neighbours crowd in.

Santa Coloma de Gramenet and Sant Adrià lie close on the landward side, and Port Fòrum Sant Adrià marks the far end of the shore.

What is the climate of Badalona?

The Mediterranean does the regulating. Sea air keeps Badalona's winters short of severe and holds the summer heat at a level the coast can live with, which is why the shoreline stays usable for much of the year. Humidity is the trade-off.

Inland at the Besòs the air feels heavier than it does on the shore, and shade around the Badalona Museum is worth the detour on a hot afternoon.

How do you get to Badalona?

Barcelona is the way in. Trains and roads out of the city run along the coast into Badalona without leaving the built-up ground of the Barcelona metropolitan area at any point. Arrivals by water are possible too.

Port Fòrum Sant Adrià sits at the Besòs end of the shoreline, and from either direction the Badalona Museum makes an obvious first stop.