Getting Around Barcelona in a Wheelchair

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Getting Around Barcelona in a Wheelchair

Getting around Barcelona in a wheelchair is easier than many European cities. During your visit to Barcelona, you will use a combination of accessible public buses, accessible bus tours, wheelchair accessible taxis, and walking/rolling on the sidewalks. By knowing all of your options, you can make good decisions to save you time and money.

Inside the Gothic Quarter

Barcelona’s medieval city center, known as the Gothic Quarter, is the most wheelchair friendly medieval city center that I’ve encountered in Europe. Whereas most medieval streets in other cities are still covered in cobblestones, Barcelona’s medieval streets are covered in smooth pavement. Additionally, most of the Gothic Quarter is flat and where sloped streets do exist, they are generally mild slopes.

Map outlining the Gothic Quarter

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Most streets in the Gothic Quarter are pedestrian only streets like the ones shown below.

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A few streets in the Gothic Quarter (like the one shown below) allow residents and taxis to drive on them. Pedestrians will need to stay on the sidewalks. At times the streets can be crowded like the one shown on the left, and early in the morning they can be empty like the one shown on the right.

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Many of the Gothic Quarter streets are covered in the large horizontally-oriented paving stones shown in the photo on the left. Wheelchair users will have minimal problems with this terrain. Some of the shops like the ice cream shop shown on the right will have flat entrance into them.

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There are some places in central Barcelona that have rough cobblestones with 3 Star Smoothness. These photos were taken in the northeast part of the Gothic Quarter near the Parc de la Ciutadella.

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There are very few hills in the Gothic Quarter. The steepest ones that I found were located around the Barcelona Cathedral. Photos are shown below. Wheel chair users will have few problems with the Gothic Quarter hills.

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Outside the Gothic Quarter, including Eixample

Outside the Gothic Quarter, you will find wide boulevards with wide sidewalks. Curb cuts like the one shown on the right are common.

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Accessible Shore Excursions – Amsterdam, Argostoli, Athens, Barcelona, Bruges, Capri, Dubrovnik, Egypt (Alexandria & Port Said), Ephesus (Kusadasi & Izmir), French Riviera (Nice, Villefranche, & Monte Carlo), Genoa, Israel (Ashdod & Haifa), Istanbul, Katakolon (Olympia), Kotor (Montenegro), La Spezia & Livorno (Florence & Tuscany), Marseilles, Mykonos, Naples, Palma de Mallorca, Rome (Civitavecchia), Salerno, Santorini, Sicily (Catania, Messina, Palermo, & Taormina), Sorrento, St. Petersburg, Stockholm, Toulon, Valencia, Venice

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