Jardins de Laribal, Barcelona

Jardins de Laribal is a hillside garden shaped by terraces, stairways, pergolas, tiled seating and small fountains. Its design took form between 1917 and 1924, when Jean-Claude Nicolas Forestier and Nicolau Maria Rubió i Tudurí prepared Montjuïc for Barcelona’s International Exposition of 1929. The gardens began as Josep Laribal’s former estate, bought by the city in 1908, and opened to the public on the night of Sant Joan in 1909.

Follow the channels beside the stair rails and you can see how water becomes part of the descent. Forestier created the Escales del Generalife with pools, fountains and cascades, while Mediterranean planting brings together pines, laurel, bitter orange, wisteria, lavender and rosemary. The Font del Gat is especially memorable: its jet emerges from a cat’s head carved by Joan Antoni Homs in 1918.

Nearby, the oval rose garden of the Colla de l’Arròs sits beneath a terracotta pergola and forms Barcelona’s first public rose garden. Josep Laribal also commissioned a neo-Arab villa beside the gardens, designed by Josep Puig i Cadafalch. After years without proper care, the whole setting was restored in 2002.