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 Barcelona has a Mediterranean climate featuring an urban micro-climate. Winters are short, cool and quite wet. Usually, temperatures do not drop below freezing. In January and February average temperatures are around 10ºC. Summers are quite dry, long and warm but in July and August maximum temperatures rarely rise above 30ºC. Annual rainfall is about 600 litres.
This climate makes that people enjoy Barcelona's beaches. Aquest clima propicia que els seus habitants gaudeixen del litoral. Nowadays, there are seven beaches in Barcelona. The best known are Sant Sebastià and Barceloneta. The recovery of Barcelona sea-front did not start until the 1992 Olympic Games were organized.
Barcelona’s coastline has changed with time: during the prehistoric age it reached the square today called Plaça de Catalunya. The land where Barceloneta district sits did not exist a century and a half before this district was built. There it is the result of sediment formation due to the sand carried by sea currents from the North that were contained by the harbour breakwater, built in 1640.
The existence of Maians Island —nowadays the train station Estació de França - helped to fix the sand and form the base land for La Barceloneta.
Barcelona has a great cultural offer, because it has huge number of museums about different disciplines and historical moments. Tha National Art Museu of Catalonia (MNAC) has a known collection of Romanesque Art, while Contemporany Art Museum of Barcelona (MACBA) is focused in art befor 1945.
Barcelona has many museums, covering different styles and periods. The National Art Museum of Catalonia has a renown Romanesque Art collection, while the Contemporary Art Museum focuses on the periods after 1945.
The Joan Miró Foundation, Picasso Museum and Antoni Tapies Foundation have important collections of these world-renowned artists. Several museums cover the areas of History and Archeology, such as the Ethnological Museum, the Historical Museum of Catalonia, the Barcelona Maritime Museum, and the Egyptian Museum, the latter being privately owned. CosmoCaixa is a science museum of Fundació La Caixa, which was awarded the 2006 European Museum of the Year. 
The city has a long tradition as a site for entities devoted to performing arts. The Great Liceu Theater (“Gran Teatre del Liceu”) and the Music Palace (Palau de la Música) are two important organisations in the non-profit area that were born from citizen initiative. More recently, institutions have also promoted important centers of artistic creation, such as Mercat de les Flors, Teatre Nacional de Catalunya and L’Auditori. Other artistic moves that have put down strong roots in the city and are worth-mentioning are music festivals like Sonar, which has become an international benchmark. Within the field of cinema, the city is home to the Filmoteca de Catalunya, a film archive which holds classic and experimental film shows and screen novelties that are not seen on more commercial circuits.
Barcelona History
There are documents proving the existence of Iberian villages for the tribes of the Laietans in the 7th and 6th centuries BC. Apparently there was also a Greek quarter, Kallipolis, in the same period. The Carthaginians occupied the city during the 3rd Century BC and by the year 218 BC the Romans were established there. Strictly speaking, therefore, Barcelona was re-founded by the Romans by the end of the 1st century BC on the site of the previous Iberian settlement and turned into a military fort called Barcino, which was located on the mount Mons Taber, a small hill where we can find the Cathedral quarter and the square of Sant Jaume today. In the 2nd Century, it was walled by the order of Claudius. The walls were used for approximately one thousand years until king Jaume I enlarged it.
In the middle of the 6th Century, Barcelona became an important commercial centre where a large part of the agricultural production of the area converged to be marketed. The city was, at the same time, an active trade centre for salt and local artisan products such as leather, weapons, wool fabric, coral pieces, etc. The achievements and innovations in the production sector, the new-born exchanges with Toulouse, Limoges and Paris, and the trade fairs of Saint-Denis and North Italy, brought changes in the habits of different social groups as well as in the spaces for living and working.
The Union of the Castilian and Aragon kingdoms, which was made official with the wedding of Ferran of Aragó and Isabel of Castilla, generated tensions between Castilians and Catalans, reaching their highest critical moment with the War of the Harvesters (“Guerra dels Segadors”) from 1640 to 1651, and later on with the Succession War from 1706 to 1714. During this time the city was besieged and, after capitulation, Catalan institutions were abolished, a large part of the Ribera district was destroyed, and the Ciutadella was built.
In the late 18th Century, Barcelona started an economic recovery fostering the growing industrialization during the following century. In 1888, Barcelona organized its first Universal Exhibition and a large area of land was developed –from the Ciutadella Park to Barceloneta. Infrastructures were improved in the whole city. During the second half of the 19th Century, at the same moment as the wall demolition project, the other cities of Barcelona plain were incorporated into the city.
At a social level, by the late 19th century, people from Barcelona lived a proliferation of new ways of life, leisure and social relations. The greatest expression of this was sport and physical activity. During the last years of the century, many swimming, tennis and football clubs were born and they were to become of great importance during the 20th century, for Barcelona's social life as well as for the international relevance of the city. Clubs like FC Barcelona, founded in 1889, the Royal Tennis Club of Barcelona and the Swimming Barcelona Club gained popularity in the city and turned Barcelona into the great capital of sport of the early 20th century.
In 1929 a new Universal Exhibition was organized and the area of Plaça d’Espanya was developed: a group of pavilions were built where the Barcelona Fair Centre is located nowadays. The 1929 exhibition was also a good excuse to build the underground, which opened in 1924 and was extended in 1926 with the “Metro Transversal”, which serviced the present L1 line between La Bordeta and Catalunya, linking the centre of the city with the exhibition venue in Plaça d’Espanya and Montjuïc.
In the summer of 1936, Barcelona was ready to celebrate the Popular Olympic Games as the Lluís Companys Olympic Stadium had been completed and Montjuïc mountain had been restructured. But the Civil War broke out in July and the games never happened.
During the war, Barcelona was bombed several times by Franco's army. The support of the city to the Republican forces had a high cost, not only during the three years of war, but also during the next thirty-six years of Franco’s regime. Franquists occupied the city during the last stage of the war.
After Franco’s death, when democracy returned, the city started a new cultural and urban development with a growing prominence of civil society, which provided Barcelona with important infrastructures that consolidated the city as a modern cosmopolitan metropolis, very attractive for tourism. During the last period, the collective effort had an important outcome with the celebration of the 1992 Olympic Games.
Montjuïc mountain, which nowadays is mostly an urban park, stands over the harbour dominated by the fortress called Castell de Montjuïc. It has several thematic gardens and sport facilities such as the Olympic Stadium, Palau Sant Jordi and the Bernat Picornell swimming pools. With regards to cultural facilities, it includes the MNAC (Art National Museum of Catalonia), Joan Miró Foundation, CaixaFòrum and the Ciutat del Teatre (“Theater City”).
Ciutadella Park is where the 1888 Universal Exhibition was held. The park was built on the land of the ancient Ciutadella fortress, built in 1716 by the order of king Felipe V. There are still several remains of that fortress such as the military chapel, the Governor's Palace (nowadays a high school), and the Polvorí (Parliament of Catalonia). The citadel demolition started in 1868. Several elements have been preserved from that time: the Triumph Arch (ancient entrance to the exhibition site) and the present Zoological Museum (where the restaurant-cafeteria used to be). Parc Güell was commissioned by Count Güell to Antoni Gaudí. The park was designed as a luxurious neighbourhood for well-off families, but only the land was sold. Nature and architecture mingle and complement each other in this park that has now been declared World Heritage.
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