Gràcia

Gràcia doesn't say it's from Barcelona—Gràcia says it's from Gràcia. Annexed in 1897 but never absorbed, this former village still runs on its own clock. The plazas matter more than the streets here: Plaça del Sol fills with guitar players and cheap beer at sunset; Plaça de la Vila de Gràcia has a clock tower the neighborhood once fought to keep. Gentrification has softened the edges—craft cocktails where anarchist bars used to be—but the bones remain. Artists, students, old Catalans who've been here forever. The 39 hotels in Gràcia Barcelona are small and personal; the 115 restaurants lean vegetarian, organic, globally curious. Park Güell sits at the northern edge, mobbed by day but the neighborhood below stays local. August's Festa Major transforms streets into competitive art installations. Come for the restaurants in Gràcia, stay because you forgot to leave.