Logbook · 8 places

What to see and do in Santa Coloma de Gramenet

What to see and do in Santa Coloma de Gramenet (Barcelonès, Barcelona): 8 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 3 Monuments · 1 Nature · 2 Activities · 1 Historical milestones

When to go to Santa Coloma de Gramenet: festival calendar

September: Santa Coloma de Gramenet Summer Main Festival (September 4-7)
December: Day of Santa Coloma (December 31)

How far each place is from the centre of Santa Coloma de Gramenet

Can Roig i Torres 150 m
Torre Pallaresa 1.3 km

Towns near Santa Coloma de Gramenet

What to see in Sant Adrià de Besòs 2.7 km · 5 places
What to see in Badalona 2.9 km · 12 places
What to see in Montcada i Reixac 4.1 km · 5 places
What to see in Santa Perpètua de Mogoda 5.2 km · 3 places
What to see in Montgat 5.8 km · 4 places
What to see in Tiana 5.9 km · 2 places
What to see in Sant Fost de Campsentelles 6.3 km · 1 place
What to see in Ripollet 6.7 km · 3 places

Spain › Catalonia › Barcelona › Barcelonès › Santa Coloma de Gramenet

What to see and do in Santa Coloma de Gramenet

Santa Coloma de Gramenet
Village
Santa Coloma de Gramenet is a city in the metropolitan area of Barcelona, in the Barcelonès comarca, located east of the Besòs river, between the Serralada de Marina and the plain of Badalona, only 9 kilometres from Plaça de Catalunya. It was called Gramanet del Besós between 1937 and the end of the civil war. Its topography is rugged: three ranges perpendicular to the Besòs form the valleys of Carcerenya and Sistrells, through which its streams used to flow. The highest point of the municipality, at 303 metres, is the old Iberian settlement of Puig Castellar. The city is connected to Barcelona by four bridges over the Besòs and by the metro, which arrived in 1983. A city of the metropolitan area on the banks of the Besòs, it preserves at Puig Castellar the Iberian site that gives its name to its highest point.
Torre Pallaresa
Monument
The Torre Pallaresa, or Castell Carcerenya, stands in the enclosed valley of Carcerenya in the Serralada Litoral, in Santa Coloma de Gramenet. It has been documented since 1012 in the Llibre de les antiguitats of Barcelona Cathedral, which records in 1057 how the counts Ramon Berenguer I and Almodis ceded to the See the churches of Santa Maria de Badalona and Santa Coloma de Gramenet, between which the property is located. Completely remodelled in the 16th century in Gothic-Renaissance style by the bishop Joan de Cardona, who turned it into a casa forta, it has two unequal towers joined by segmental-arch galleries; the emperor Charles V granted it the title of castle in 1543. It was declared a historic-artistic monument of national interest in 1931.
Torre Baldovina
Monument
The Torre Balldovina is a monumental complex in Santa Coloma de Gramenet located in Pau Casals square, with a tower dating from the 10th-11th centuries that served a watch and defence function in a time of political instability. Next to it a stately house was built in the 18th century, partly in Art Nouveau style as part of the renovation driven at the start of the 20th century by Ferran de Sagarra i de Siscar, who extended the house with an Art Nouveau wing and a large garden; between 1914 and 1918 a neo-Gothic wing was also added, straddling Art Nouveau and Noucentisme. Declared a cultural asset of national interest, the complex has housed the Torre Balldovina Museum since 1987, whose first phase opened in June of that year following a project begun in 1982.
Can Roig i Torres
Monument
Can Roig i Torres is a stately house built between 1910 and 1913 commissioned by Rafael Roig i Torres, consul of Uruguay in Barcelona, in a Frenchified Art Nouveau style; it served as a hospital during the Civil War and later as the headquarters of the Falange, until it became the Santa Coloma de Gramenet Municipal Music School in 1987. In 2007 a semi-sunken auditorium was added that adapts to the slope of the land by means of ramps and stairs, with a façade combining white cladding with large glazed openings in dark aluminium; the flat, walkable roof rests on a floating concrete slab that isolates the interior from vibrations and outside noise, while outside pine wood and vegetation soften the whole.
Iberian Site of Puig Castellar
Nature
The Iberian settlement of Puig Castellar is a fortified site atop the hill of the same name, 303 metres high, above Santa Coloma de Gramenet (Barcelonès), declared a Bien Cultural de Interés Nacional (Catalonia's highest level of heritage protection). Founded by the Laietani people around the sixth century BC and abandoned between the third and second centuries BC, it is one of the best-preserved Iberian settlements in the Barcelona area. Its elliptical layout had three longitudinal streets and more than thirty houses, for a population of a little over three hundred inhabitants engaged mainly in farming and livestock raising. Discovered in 1904 by Ferran Sagarra, owner of the land, it was fully excavated between 1922 and 1958, campaigns in which an iron head, a terracotta head of the goddess Tanit and a trepanned skull of Celtic tradition were found. Today it can be visited freely, with explanatory panels and a reconstructed house with a mill.
Santa Coloma de Gramenet Summer Main Festival
Activity
Summer Festa Major of Santa Coloma de Gramenet, held on the first weekend of September with about a hundred activities decentralised throughout the city. It originated in 1895, when it was created at the request of the well-off families who spent the summer in the town, as an occasion to welcome and see them off. Alongside it, the municipality also holds a winter Festa Major, on 31 December.
Day of Santa Coloma
Activity
Winter Festa Major of Santa Coloma de Gramenet (Barcelonès), in honour of the city's patron saint, Santa Coloma. Its central day is 31 December, the saint's feast day; the city also holds a summer Festa Major on the first weekend of September.
The great migration of the 1950s and 1960s
Historical milestone
The municipality went from some fifteen thousand inhabitants in the middle of the twentieth century to more than one hundred thousand in 1970, with the massive arrival of families from the south of the peninsula. Entire neighbourhoods were born of self-building and of neighbourhood struggle for services.