For most of the twentieth century El Raval was Barcelona's notorious Barrio Chino, a dense warren of cheap bars, brothels and flophouses that drew sailors, anarchists and writers like Jean Genet. Slum clearance and the arrival of the MACBA contemporary art museum in 1995 reshaped it, and today it is one of the city's most diverse and energetic districts — North African grocers, Pakistani restaurants and Filipino bakeries sit alongside galleries, vintage shops and skateboarders rolling across the museum's white plaza.
The neighbourhood runs west from La Rambla to the Ronda de Sant Pau, with the Rambla del Raval — a palm-lined boulevard punctuated by Botero's fat bronze cat — as its modern spine. The Boqueria market spills in from the eastern edge, and Gaudí's early Palau Güell hides just off La Rambla. Carrer de Joaquín Costa and the streets around it hold the densest concentration of bars in the old town.
Come here to eat cheaply and well, to browse the MACBA and the medieval Antic Hospital de la Santa Creu, and to drink in bars that range from century-old vermouth joints to grungy late-night dives. It rewards wandering, though the western fringes still feel rough after dark.