More than 1.8 million people participated in La Mercè 2015, the most important city festival in Barcelona. People took to the streets to enjoy the 500 activities scheduled between 18th and 24th September at various venues in the city. There have been seven days of celebration with a program aimed at a diverse and heterogeneous audience of all ages.

You can see the participation data for La Mercè 2015 in the attached document (in Catalan).

La Mercè 2015: participation report

Three days before the closing of the festival, the Barcelona summer festival 2015 (Grec Festival de Barcelona) shows a positive balance. It reaches 141,000 spectators and 76,000 tickets sold (9,000 more than last year). The festival occupancy rate has risen to 71%.

You can see the provisional data on the Festival in the attached document (in Catalan).

Barcelona summer festival Grec 2015. Provisional data

As of 2011 the Institut de Cultura (Culture Institute of Barcelona) of Barcelona City Council has carried out a yearly survey on the visitors to the city’s museums in order to gain an insight into the profile of visitors to these facilities.

In 2014, eleven museums took part in the survey and the subsequent analysis of the data has provided us with a visitor profile that is very similar to that of previous years.

• Three of every four visitors to Barcelona’s museums are from abroad, mainly from European countries, whilst one in ten visitors is a resident in the city of Barcelona. The museums that receive most visitors, namely the Picasso Museum, Montjuïc Castle and the Miró Foundation, are also those with the largest proportion of foreign visitors. The only museums to receive mostly Catalan visitors are El Born Centre Cultural, the Centre de Cultura Contemporànea de Barcelona (Barcelona Contemporary Culture Centre – CCCB) and the Museu Blau science museum.
• Overall, among all the museums under analysis, there are more women visitors than men, although this is not the case for all facilities.
• Over 80% are visiting the museum for the first time, although among visitors who live in the Catalan capital and those who are visiting the CCCB, this percentage is just under 50%.
• A third of visitors are accompanied by their partner, whilst a quarter are accompanied by friends.
• Overall, visitors purchase 2.3 tickets, a figure that for the Museu Blau and El Born Centre Cultural is 3.0, or just under, as these facilities receive more family visitors, as is the case with the Museu de la Música (Music Museum).
• Given that most visitors are from abroad, tourist information points serve as the main promoters of the city’s museums. However, Catalan visitors most frequently quote the media, advertising, word of mouth and having visited the museum before as their source of information.

More information

Document in Catalan

Barcelona City Council’s Institut de Cultura (ICUB), in collaboration with the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), has carried out a project allowing it to recreate in 3D the Roman Barcelona and its surroundings of the late 3rd century CE. All the information is georeferenced so that our modern city can be superimposed on Barcino – the Roman Barcelona –, revealing the location of features like the Roman aqueduct, which crossed today’s Plaça Vuit de Març and Plaça Nova. It also shows a domus situated on today’s Plaça de Sant Miquel, for example, and the underground site beneath the Museu d’Història de Barcelona (MUHBA). Additionally, the application proposes various routes through the Roman Barcelona and contains information on all the archaeological vestiges that have been found in the city.

The recreated model is based on the scientific study conducted by a large group of archaeologists, historians, epigraphers and other experts. The starting point has been the documents of all provenances relating to archaeological excavations, heritage studies and research projects published in connection with the Roman Barcelona.

The application is addressed to different types of users and may be downloaded in three languages (Catalan, Spanish or English) from the website of the Servei d’Arqueologia de Barcelona.

It is currently available for tablets and personal computers, and it will soon be made available for smartphones and Google Earth as well.

Video: Barcino 3D