Arenas

Right on the Plaça d'Espanya, a few hundred feet from the Magic Fountain, stands Arenas, a former bullfighting ring transformed in 2011 into a Mall after eight years, a bankruptcy and 200M € of transformation. 
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Arenas hosts on its domed roof a restaurant with good critics : Abrassame




The facade, which is  neo-mudéjar in style, a 19th-century revival of Moorish architecture, characterised by striped stone arches and ornate tile and brickwork ( it was designed by Catalan architect Domènech i Montaner ) has been kept and elevated, but inside nothing aside from it’s circular shape remains to hint at its former usage. Inside, architect Richard Rogers has inserted a colourful circus of leisure, in an atrium criss-crossed by escalators, walkways and giant structural elements. It's like walking into a giant tin of Quality Street, populated by Spanish fashionistas buying designer shades. 

The term "hi-tech" now seems a quaint way to describe Rogers's style, especially in a historic refit like this; but, as with his breakthrough design for the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the structural and service systems within the building are openly expressed in bright colours, and the joins between old and new are treated with similar honesty. Each service element here is coloured according to function: red for the structural steel; yellow for the giant structure supporting the roof; orange for the toilet cubicles; purple and pink for the fire escape and ventilation. The colours bring to mind the capes and costumes of the matadors, though now we humans are the cattle being coaxed by them.

But the real plus is the possibilty of  climbing up to the open-air, domed roof and catching a glimpse of the city below. From the side facing Plaça d’Espanya towards Montjuïc the view is every bit as good as one can imagine and looking out across the city from Arenas, it's an enviable spread of enlightened city-making. Ildefons Cerdà's visionary street plan of the 1860s laid the foundations for Catalonia's distinctive modernista movement of the early 20th century, which peppered the city grid with sensuous, organic structures, not least the works of local hero Antoni Gaudì, whose Sagrada Familia is the city's stunning centrepiece.

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