Instead of the Sagrada Família: the less crowded Barcelona and Spain

In 2024 the Sagrada Família came close to 5 million visitors, and today it is impossible to get in without a timed ticket bought days in advance, an airport-style security queue and a packed basilica. If you're wondering what to see in Barcelona instead of the Sagrada Família, the good news is that the city holds dozens of equally surprising places you can enter without a line, often for free. And widening the view to the whole of Spain, there are villages and sites that give you the same wonder with a tenth of the tourists.

Hidden Barcelona

Let's start with the less obvious Barcelona. A few metres from the Cathedral, in the Barri Gòtic, a doorway on Carrer del Paradís hides a Gothic courtyard where four columns of the Temple of Augustus rise: they are two thousand years old, mark the highest point of Roman Barcino and can be visited free of charge, in total silence. If you're after recent, harsher history, in Poble-sec the Refugi 307 awaits you, almost 400 metres of air-raid tunnels dug by hand by the neighbours during the Civil War, visitable only by reservation with a guide who recounts how the district organised itself under the bombing.

Want an alternative to Gaudí's modernism without the crush? On the slope of Montjuïc the Jardins de Mossèn Costa i Llobera are one of the largest cactus gardens in Europe, with views over the port and free entry: a breath of air compared to the queues of Park Güell. Also on Montjuïc, the modernist cemetery lines up mausoleums signed by the very architects who designed the city, along staircases plunging towards the sea that are almost always deserted. And for those who love churches, Santa Anna, two minutes from Plaça Catalunya, is a Romanesque jewel with a cloister that thousands of passers-by ignore every day.

Beyond the city

Just leave Barcelona to rediscover the authentic Catalonia. In the Priorat, land of important wines, the village of Siurana is perched on a limestone spur that drops sheer onto a turquoise lake: a few houses, a ruined castle and silence. Further west, in Aragon, Albarracín is one of the most beautiful villages in Spain, with its pink-ochre lanes climbing above the river Guadalaviar and walls running along the ridge.

Heading down towards Castile, Cuenca suspends its famous "hanging houses" over the void between two gorges, a panorama as photographed as it is uncrowded out of season. Near Segovia, Maderuelo is a walled village surrounded by the water of a reservoir, perfect for a slow stop far from the coaches. And in the province of León, the Médulas offer a landscape of red pinnacles: what remains of the largest open-pit gold mine of the Roman empire, today a UNESCO site that few Italians know.

Madrid too

Madrid too has its quiet side, useful if from Barcelona you continue the journey. On the edge of the city, the romantic garden of El Capricho, commissioned by the Duchess of Osuna, opens only at weekends and remains one of the capital's best-kept secrets. Beneath Plaza de Chamberí sleeps a ghost station of the metro, closed in 1966 and turned into a museum with the original advertising posters still on the walls. In the heart of La Latina, the Jardín del Príncipe de Anglona is a walled eighteenth-century garden where you can escape the traffic, while in Malasaña the church of San Antonio de los Alemanes surprises with an elliptical plan and a dome entirely frescoed, a "Baroque chapel" that is almost unknown.

The lesson is simple: Spain is not only its icons. Keep your visit to the Sagrada Família if you care about it, booking it early in the morning, but devote the rest of your time to these places. You'll walk more, spend less and take home the feeling of having seen something most travellers have missed. It is the best way to truly get to know Barcelona and Spain, and also to give some breathing room back to a city that tourist pressure is putting under real strain.