Where to Stay in Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Catalunya

What is Santa Coloma de Gramenet known for?

The Besòs runs along one side and the coastal range rises on the other, so Santa Coloma de Gramenet fits into 7 square kilometres between the water and the hill of Puig Castellar. The Balldovina Tower Museum holds the town collection. Parc de la Serralada de Marina covers the ground on the north side, while Badalona and Sant Adrià de Besòs stand between these streets and the sea.

Torre Mena and Casa Agustí carry the older addresses.

What are the main landmarks in Santa Coloma de Gramenet?

The Balldovina Tower Museum is the anchor. It keeps the municipal collection, while Torre Mena, Casa Agustí, Can Busquets, Can Met, Can Muntlló and Can Guardiola preserve the older houses and farmsteads the streets grew around. Parròquia de Sant Pacià covers the parish side.

Higher up, the Poblat ibèric del Turó d'en Boscà and the Cova d'en Genís belong to a far older occupation of Puig Castellar, and the Parc de la Serralada de Marina keeps that ground open. Casa Miquel Badia rounds off the list.

What is the history of Santa Coloma de Gramenet?

People were on this hill early. The Poblat ibèric del Turó d'en Boscà sits on the slope of Puig Castellar and the Cova d'en Genís goes back further again, so the record here starts on high ground rather than by the water, long before any street plan existed. Puig Castellar is the highest point of the municipality.

Rome came to the coast. Baetulo carries the Roman name on this stretch of shore, and the ground between the two places has been worked and built on ever since. The name has not been fixed.

Between 1936 and 1939 the municipality went by Gramenet de Besòs, and the river in that title still runs along the same bank it did then, whatever the town above it has been called. Farmhouses came before the blocks. Can Busquets, Can Met, Can Muntlló, Can Guardiola and Casa Agustí are the surviving names from the agricultural period, and Torre Mena and the Balldovina Tower Museum carry that continuity into the built city of Barcelonès.

San Jeroni de la Murtra and the Castell de Montcada belong to the wider record of the same valley.

Where is Santa Coloma de Gramenet?

Seven square kilometres, no more. Santa Coloma de Gramenet occupies the left bank of the Besòs on the south-east side of the coastal range, with Puig Castellar at 299 m as its highest ground and the Parc de la Serralada de Marina spreading across the north side. The sea is not its own.

Sant Adrià de Besòs and Badalona hold the shore in between, which leaves this a river-and-ridge municipality rather than a coastal one, however near the water actually is.

What is the climate of Santa Coloma de Gramenet?

The coastal range takes the first weather. Santa Coloma de Gramenet sits on its south-east side, low down by the Besòs, so sea air that gets past Badalona and Sant Adrià de Besòs still reaches these streets and keeps the summer nights heavier than they are up on Puig Castellar. Height is worth something here.

July and August are the hot end of the year, and the Parc de la Serralada de Marina is where the shade is once the blocks below start holding their heat.

How do you get to Santa Coloma de Gramenet?

Barcelonès is one continuous built-up county. Santa Coloma de Gramenet joins Sant Adrià de Besòs and Badalona along the Besòs, and rail and road run through all three, so arriving from Barcelona is a short hop rather than a journey. Bridges do the work.

The river is the thing to cross, and once over it the Balldovina Tower Museum and the Parròquia de Sant Pacià are walkable, while the climb to the Parc de la Serralada de Marina is the part that takes effort.