Eixample is the area between the former villages of Gràcia, Sarria and the Plaça Catalunya, west of the center of Barcelona.
History
The area was build after the permission from Madrid in the middle of the 19th century to tear down the old walls, build by the Bourbons in the beginning of the 18th century. The residences of the area were build between around 1860 and 1920 and in this way, a new fashionable quarter in Barcelona was created: a place where the high classes of society and the bourgoisie moved in - and where they to a certain extent still live today.
It was the
engineer
Ildefons Cerdà, who created the enormous project that was to be called L’Eixample (the expansion or enlargement in Catalan). Before 1850's the town of Barcelona ended where Plaça Catalunya lies today. The areas north of this point were loclated villages: Gràcia, Sarrià, Sant Gervasi, Les Corts, Vallcarca., etc. With the contruction of L’Eixample the city grew and now became ten times as big as it had been before.
Modernism
The new L’Eixample was a true paradise for the generation of young hopeful architects. An enormous area was ready for construction - and there was even money to build for. Among the architects were Antoni Gaudí, Domènech i Montaner and Puig i Cadafalch.
Today L'Eixample is a big outdoors museum, and the district contains a huge amount of Art nouveau-architecture (which in the Catalan version is called modernism). On almost every corner modernist glass mosaics, sculptures and woodwork is to be found.
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