This is a wonderful book, which tells Barcelona's story through the last two thousand years - though its main focus is the last thousand. Hughes' area of expertise is art and architecture, but in order to tell the story of Barcelona's cultural past and present, he has painted a vivid picture of the city's political and social past. Highly readable, this is a book so densely packed with information that it definitely merits a second, perhaps a third reading as an introduction to the history of this fascinating city. ( )

Robert Hughes writes beautifully and I was enchanted with his book "the Shock of the New. And here, with "Barcelona" he's done a great job. I worked for four years in Spain and made a number of trips to Barcelona. Loved the place and managed to see a fair bit of it. Though, as a tourist, one never really gets to know a city. Hughes's book is mainly historical but some delightful sections about Picasso and Gaudi. I really liked the book and I'm sad to see kit going to a charity. But I have to downsize my library and this is one of the victims. The reality is that I will never be able to sit down and re-read it ....pity. I give it five stars. ( )

58-- Barcelona, by Robert Hughes (read 28 Apr 2023) Because I had read the author's The Fatal Shore and liked it I decided to read this book (published in 1992) . It is a very different kind of book. It spends many pages talking about buildings and other topics of little interest to me. When I was in the Navy I spent in 1953 many interesting hours in Barcelona. I was smart enough to pay much attention to Gaudi's fantastic unfinished church, the discussion of which in the book I was glad to read. But much else was of little interest to me. ( )

A wonderful read by such an expressive knowledgable writer on art and architecture. This book sets a high standard in its field and must rate as a most informative guide to any city on Earth. Full marks to Robert Hughes, a titan in Twentieth Century art criticism.

In brief, I began the book some time ago, got about to the halfway point. After a long hiatus, finished the second half. Great skill in architectural description and communicating the author's enthusiasm; had me wishing for more pictures of the buildings and details. My favorite: the description of Domenech i Montaner's Hospital de Sant Pau in chapter 7. As an aside, Hughes wonders about the affinity of Japanese tourists for the works of Gaudi. Is there an affinity of his surrealistic designs and manga, perhaps? I got a little bogged down in the number of names to keep track of, and there were a lot of architectural and building construction terms that I was unfamiliar with. The first half covers history, culture, and the plan of the city. Hats off to the author for mastering the secondary literature available only in Catalan, given his many other interests (Australian history, American art and culture). From the many quotations and references it sounds like it would be worth learning Catalan just to be able to read the gossipy chronicles of Josep Pla. I now want to go back and re-read the first half. This is a recommendation from the perspective of a novice in both the history of the region and architecture in general; I'm not in the habit of assigning 4 or 5 stars; a 3 is "good enough to re-read." ( )