Palau de les Heures

You’re hiking up the northern edge of the city, lungs working against the incline of the Collserola foothills, and suddenly the Mediterranean grit of Barcelona vanishes. In its place stands a French-style chateau that looks like it was air-lifted straight out of the Loire Valley and dropped onto a hillside in Horta. This is the Palau de les Heures, also known as Casa Gallart, and it is a monument to late 19th-century ambition, colonial wealth, and the heavy, lingering ghosts of the Spanish Civil War.

Built between 1894 and 1898 by architect Augusto Font i Carreras, the palace was the dream of Josep Gallart Forgas, a man who made his fortune in Puerto Rico and wanted the world to know it. He didn’t want a traditional Catalan farmhouse; he wanted four cylindrical towers, high-pitched roofs, and the kind of aristocratic pretension that only a massive pile of money can buy. The name 'Heures' comes from the ivy that clings to the stone, a relentless green tide that tries to reclaim the building for the mountain every year.

But don't let the fairytale silhouette fool you. This place has seen some dark days. During the Spanish Civil War, the palace became the secret residence of Manuel Azaña, the last President of the Second Spanish Republic. While the city below was being pummeled by Italian bombers, Azaña was tucked away here. If you look closely at the grounds, you’ll find the entrance to an air raid shelter built specifically to protect him—a concrete reminder that even in a palace, you’re never truly safe from history. It’s a jarring contrast: the delicate, French-inspired aesthetics of the upper floors versus the cold, subterranean reality of a bunker.

Today, the palace has been swallowed by the University of Barcelona’s Mundet Campus. It’s a strange, beautiful marriage of high-society history and the mundane reality of academic life. You’ll see students hunched over laptops on the stone terraces and professors rushing through the ornate doorways of the Bosch i Gimpera Foundation. The gardens, the Jardins de les Heures, are the real draw for those who manage to find their way up here. They are laid out in three terraced levels, blending the formal geometry of Italian Renaissance gardens with the wilder, more romantic greenery of the Mediterranean. It’s a place of orange trees, magnolias, and the constant, rhythmic sound of water from the fountains.

Is it perfect? No. The proximity to the Ronda de Dalt means you’ll never have total silence; the low hum of the highway is a constant reminder that the modern city is clawing at the gates. The building itself is mostly used for university administration, so don't expect to go wandering through the private ballrooms. But that’s part of the charm. It’s not a polished museum where you’re ushered through a gift shop. It’s a living, breathing part of the city that most tourists completely ignore in favor of the nearby Labyrinth of Horta. If you want to see where Barcelona’s elite once hid from the world—and where the Republic made its final stand—this is the place. It’s honest, it’s slightly frayed at the edges, and it’s one of the few places left in the city where you can actually hear yourself think, provided the wind is blowing the highway noise the other way.