The park, under which passes a section of the Ronda del Litoral ring road, is named after a cascade, or waterfall, that descends from a pool towards its namesake avenue. An ensemble that can be see from the small, round, raised square at the side of the water.
This is the first of a series of parks that stretch almost to Sant Adrià del Besòs. Pedestrians can take the paths between the plants, crossed by the occasional street.
History
Parc de les Cascades is one of the five large green spaces, along with Parc del Port Olímpic, Parc de la Nova Icària, Parc del Poblenou and Parc de Carles I, that were built on Poblenou’s old industrial land at the start of the 1990s.
Barcelona reclaimed that land and dedicated some of it to creating new public green spaces, as part of the major facelift the city’s coastal facade received for the 1992 Olympic Games.
Biodiversity
The park boasts hackberry trees (Celtis australis) and cypresses (Cupressus sempervirens); jacarandas (Jacaranda mimosifolia) which adorn the park in the summer with their lilac-blue flowers; poplars (Populus alba and Populus alba ‘Pyramidalis’ ) and olive trees (Olea europaea), as well as tall, slim fan palms (Washingtonia robusta). Groups of dwarf palms (Chamaerops humilis) and large shrubby scrubs surround the landscape below.
Both sides of the park are delineated by the splendid, bright green of the wide and very long grass-covered parterres, where lush Aleppo pines (Pinus halepensis), stone pines (Pinus pinea), tipu trees (Tipuana tipu) and other species grow. There are benches by the parterres so you can sit in the shade of the boughs of plane trees (Platanus x hispanica).
Art and Architecture
Standing in the middle of a sheet of water at the start of the park, just at the point where the Ronda del Litoral goes underground, there is a series of sculptures by Auke de Vries entitled El poder de la paraula (The Power of the Word). Holland’s gift to Barcelona for the Olympic Games, it is like a group of stalks rising up in a determined fashion.
Another sculpture that catches the visitor’s eye in the middle of the long avenue that is Parc de les Cascades is Antoni Llena’s David i Goliat (David and Goliath), a giant mask whose light supports make it seem it is flying and whose whiteness offers a powerful contrast to the blue of the sky.
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- Phone number
- Tel.: 010
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- Titularity
- Public center
- Address:
- Avinguda del Litoral, 12 - 14
- Districte:
- Ciutat Vella
- Neighborhood:
- la Barceloneta
- City:
- Barcelona