Ciutadella Park

Parc de la Ciutadella occupies the site of a citadel built by King Philip V in 1715 to garrison troops and keep watch over a recently conquered, resentful Barcelona following the War of the Spanish Succession — for over a century the fortress was a hated symbol of occupation and later a political prison. In 1869, following a change in the political tide, General Prim handed the citadel back to the city on the condition its land become a public park, and the resulting design competition was won by architect Josep Fontserè in 1871.

Fontserè's plan gave the park its grand landscaped layout, but its most famous single feature — the Cascada Monumental, a theatrical fountain and grotto structure combining sculpture, waterfalls and a triumphal-arch-like stone facade — was executed with meaningful design input from a young architecture student named Antoni Gaudí, then working as Fontserè's assistant years before his independent career began; several of the more unusual, freeform decorative touches are attributed to Gaudí's early influence.