BARCELONA

Barceloneta was laid out in 1753 for families displaced by the building of the citadel — a grid of narrow blocks, and Spain's first planned modern neighbourhood. The beach in front of it is younger than most of the people on it: the sand was brought in for the 1992 Olympics, when the city finally turned to face its own sea.

The shoreline is modern and unsentimental. A 78-metre steel lattice pylon from 1931 still carries the harbour cable car. A glass sail of a hotel closes the southern end. Between them, on the sand itself, stand four cracked glass cubes stacked askew — Rebecca Horn's memorial to the beach shacks the city knocked down.

This is the only city beach in the collection, and the skyline stands directly on it. Barceloneta faces southeast, so here too the sun rises out of the water.