Ciutat Vella is a district of Barcelona, numbered District 1. The name means "old city" in Catalan and refers to the oldest neighborhoods in the city ofBarcelona, Catalonia, Spain. Ciutat Vella is nestled between the Mediterranean Sea and the neighborhood called l'Eixample. It is considered the centre of the city; the Plaça Catalunya is one of the most popular meeting points in all of Catalonia. There are four administrative neighborhoods :
Running down the center of the Ciutat Vella are the boulevards Les Rambles, popularly known as La Rambla since they are continuous, like a single street. Les Rambles stretches from Plaça Catalunya to the Mediterranean Sea and, since the 1990s, now extends out over the sea into one of Barcelona's newest centers of entertainment, Maremàgnum. Each of Les Rambles has its own specialty. La Rambla de les Flors is devoted to flower stands, another Rambla to animal vendors, and the lowest Rambla hosts temporary art fairs. El Mercat de Sant Josep and Gran Teatre del Liceu are both located here. Les Rambles are among the most frequently travelled streets by pedestrians in Barcelona. At the bottom, there is the Museu Marítim, which chronicles the history of life on the Mediterranean, including a full-scale model of a galley. The museum is housed in the medieval Drassanes, where the ships that made Catalonia a great sea power in the Mediterranean were built.
Raval
This portion of the city is often referred to as el Barri Xinès, or Chinatown. It acquired this name not due to there being residents of Chinese origin, but because it was how a Chinese city was imagined to be. Due to its previous reputation as a dangerous neighborhood, the local government has invested there, including the creation of a walkway to the sea, the Rambla del Raval and building development, including the new Filmoteca de Catalunya. It has become one of the most dynamic areas of the city. Many smaller ethnic restaurants may be found in Raval and fashionable restaurants and cafés have been opening up. The Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona is in this neighborhood.
On the other side of Les Rambles, is el Barri Gòtic. This neighborhood houses the Cathedral of Barcelona, the Palau de la Generalitat de Catalunya, and l'Ajuntament de Barcelona. Tourists visit this neighborhood to see Plaça Reial and to shop in one of the tourist shops along Carrer Ferran. The Museu Picasso can be found in the area known as el Born, within the Barri Gótic, in addition to the historic restaurant Els Quatre Gats, which was a popular hang-out for artists, including Pablo Picasso. To the north of the Gothic Quarter lie the Jardins de Fonseré i Mestre which contain modernist buildings housing zoological and geological collections. The adjacent Parc de la Ciutadella includes both the Parliament of Catalonia and the Barcelona Zoo whose most famous resident was an albinogorilla, Floquet de Neu, who died in 2003 of skin cancer.
