Climb on up Montjuic, past the symbols of the city’s 1992 Olympic rebirth: the great Stadium and the padlocked pool, where gulls now float. At the summit is a somehow spiritual ‘white stylus’, nearly 110m tall: architect Santiago Calatrava’s epoch-defining Torre de Telefónica. Modern and pure, it points to space, while the hazy hills and sea, to the south, look just as they might have before the Romans.

GREAT CITY MOMENTS

You’re on holiday, so to hell with it – any time is wine time, and since the sun’s nearly over the yardarm, you need a seat outside La Vinya del Senyor (Plaça Santa Maria 5; 00 34 93 310 3379). This lovely little shove of a tavern spills its tables before the great church doors, and perfection is a rioja or two, pretending to read your holiday novel while actually preferring the sun on your shut eyelids as it glances off Santa Maria’s huge, hot-stone flanks.

From high on Tibidabo Hill (reckon on 30 minutes/£20 by taxi from the middle of town), the city fans out fuzzily below, like a little Los Angeles. Up here, a weird, rickety fairground – or Parc d’Attracciones (the oldest in Spain) – creaks and wheels, and cissy screams drift on the air. More rarefied is the terrace of nearby Gran Hotel La Florida (Ctra Vallvidrera al Tibidabo 83-93; 00 34 93 259 3000, www.hotellaflorida.com). Its L’Orangerie restaurant has a dozen parasol-shaded tables serving you views of the infinite Mediterranean. Feel your pulse calm as you slow-lunch on lobster salad, then monkfish, while the rosé bottle sinks clinkingly into its ice bucket.

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BACKGROUND

• My peddle around Girona

• Which guidebook is best for Barcelona?

• El Bulli for us

Dali's bohemian Barcelona

Graham Keeley explores Dali's favourite haunts in Barcelona

• Barcelona's famalia

• Instant weekend: Barcelona

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People-watching, coupled with the staccato-flap of departing pigeons, soon becomes hypnotic in Plaça Reial. The square was fashioned in Neoclassical style in 1848, with galloping arcades and, later, Gaudí lampposts, all centring on a splashing fountain. It’s not off the beaten track, but it’s one of the remotest, eerily beautiful bits of Barcelona, and when the sun shafts through the palm trees in the half-light of a late afternoon, it could almost be a chunk of some forgotten civilisation, semi-hacked from rainforest.

Pack your trunks and say hello to the circus: admittedly, Barceloneta Beach isn’t Bounty-Bar beautiful, but on a hot summer afternoon, it’s riveting, teeming with preening city life. Tattooed adonises in Speedos, shapely bikini babes, and pacing beer vendors with coolbags who scarper at the sound of a siren. A real-life Almodóvar movie.

You may know the town’s touristy central Ramblas parade, but there’s another one, lovelier and more laid-back: late pm, hit La Rambla del Poblenou, in the scruffy-trendy district of the same name. It’s a leisurely slice of life: kebab sellers, neon pharmacies, old folk with Spacehopper waistlines, and pimientos del padron (fried peppers) at a table outside Can Toni (No.9), as you plan what to do tonight.

£19 BUYS: A taxi from the airport into town.

£2.90 BUYS: An Aerobus ticket for the same trip – departures every 12 minutes.

LATE, GREAT GAUDI: The architect died after being run down by a tram. Pay homage at the junction of Gran Via de les Corts Catalans and Carrer Bailen.

FOODIE PIT-STOP: Ferran Adria, one of the world’s greatest chefs, goes to simple stand-up bar Quimet & Quimet (Poeta Cabanyés 25) for tapas and a tipple.

MOVE OVER HOTEL ARTS: W Barcelona (www.starwoodhotels.com), the first high-rise hotel on the waterfront in 15 years, opens September 2009. Boy, the view from the roof bar…