Montjuic, Barcelona

An expansive wooded hill with a flattened top, Montjuic (Jewish Mountain) stretches between the city and sea and offers a rich array of cultural sites and sporting activities including a sprawling fortress, the MNAC museum, the Olympic stadium, and the “Magic Fountains of Montjuic.”

The fortress itself is home to an open-air cinema in the summer, and the neighborhood offers scores of other cultural events and festivals which attract a larger crowd of visitors than residents.

In terms of socializing, though, Montjuic provides little, save for the surreal experience of eating and drinking in Poble Espanyol, an artificial village constructed in 1929 that incorporates all the architectural styles of Spain.

Among the plethora of kitschy but fun flamenco concerts, tapas joints, and traditional village bodegas, however, Montjuic does hide one of Barcelona’s clubbing treasures – the nightlife legend La Terrrazza, where young partiers dance the night away under the stars from May to September.