48h Open House Barcelona 2025: 10 buildings you'll love to visit

BarcelonaThe 15th edition of the 48h Open House BCN architecture festival is here, taking place on Saturday, October 25th and Sunday, October 26th in Barcelona and six other cities: Badalona, ​​Sant Joan Despí, Santa Coloma de Gramanet, Hospitalet de Llobregat, Vilassar de Dalt, and Sitges. In Barcelona, ​​136 buildings can be visited, as part of a total of 207 activities scheduled across all participating cities and eight itineraries. Thirty-one percent of the buildings will be opened for the first time at the festival, offering an exceptional opportunity to discover spaces usually closed to the public. These are 10 recommended visits among the new features of 48h Open House Barcelona 2025.

The collector couple Fernando Casacuberta and Coty Marsans are known for their exquisite craftsmanship, rigor, and, above all, discretion. Thus, the opening of their collection to the public in the old hospital of San Severo It was quite an event. And the visit is a memorable experience. As for the architecture, the Garcés, De Seta, Bonet Arquitectes studio took on the challenge of merging the ruins of a 15th-century chapel with those of construction work that had been halted for about twenty years. And they succeeded with a "metallic skin," as the architects call it, made from perforated sheet metal. They used it to recreate the chapel's lost vaults and create a staircase that connects the basement, the ground floor, and the first floor of offices. Furthermore, this skin becomes "a museum device" that allows the works to be viewed from different perspectives.

The former Sant Sever Hospital will be open on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The organizers warn that this building has "a high influx of visitors," and that once maximum capacity is reached, the queue will be closed.

The Mundet Homes are one of the great examples of how, during the Franco regime, architect Manuel Baldrich broke away from the vulgar official architecture and created a modern architecture. The church of the Mundet Homes is inspired by Nordic models, especially by the architect Alvar Aalto. The facade is made of exposed brickwork, without windows or a rose window, because the church was planned to house an organ. Thus, upon arrival, the bas-relief by Eudald Serra takes center stage. The Savior of grieving humanityThe church was to serve more than a thousand children and elderly people living in the complex, so Baldrich planned a grandiose single-nave interior. In parallel to its architecture, the Mundet Homes church is a showcase of contemporary art. In addition to Serra, Baldrich commissioned the liturgical furnishings, stained-glass windows, and other elements from Josep Maria Subirachs, Jordi Doménech, Joan Vila Grau, Joan Josep Tharrats, and Will Faber.

The church will be open on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Guided tours are subject to availability.

The new Sagrada Família social services center, which serves approximately 6,000 people in the neighborhood, is located within the block of the former Myrurgia factory, so a visit also allows for a glimpse of it, albeit from the outside. Architects Pedro Garcia, Albert Chavarría, and Marco Mosca (mm. Architecture Office) were challenged to design a building with intensive use without sacrificing the warmth of its spaces. The facilities are organized around four courtyards that allow natural light and ventilation. The building has two floors: the ground floor concentrates direct user services, and the upper floor houses offices and other internal work areas. To give the entire complex a sense of warmth and closeness, the architects used wood and ceramics and finished the complex with a green roof, which also improves the building's thermal comfort.

The center will be open on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Guided tour without prior registration.

Originally built for Telefónica, the Diagonal One Tower is one of Barcelona's most iconic works and, at the same time, a building that is the result of a sensitive interpretation of the site and its surroundings. Its creator, architect Enric Massip, has defined it as "a landmark at the beginning of the Diagonal, the sign of the Cerdà plan's arrival at the sea." It is also like a symbolic gateway in the city of Barcelona. One of the distinctive features of the tower, which stands 110 meters tall, is its exterior metal structure, which allows for more flexible interiors because there are no pillars. Furthermore, the white color of the façade is intended to express "transparency, precision, and luminosity." In addition to Herzog & de Meuron's Fòrum building, the Diagonal One Tower was originally intended to connect with Zaha Hadid's Spiralling Tower, but the project was shelved.

During the 48-hour Open House, the Diagonal One Tower will be open on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Guided tour without prior registration.

The founding work of Lluís Clotet and Oscar Tusquets remains an exceptional building more than fifty years after its construction. The Fullà House, In Guinardó, it's a lesson in talent for overcoming the lighting difficulties of the site, which is also steep. For this reason, the architects used a huge dividing wall as a guide to build the entire building. The result of all this was a construction that can seem labyrinthine, with overlapping single-story apartments, duplexes, and triplexes. Casa Fullà, which was known as The House of the Hippies, It is also an extraordinary place for its rich history and the artists who lived there, such as the poet Joan Brossa and his wife, Pepa Llopis; the founder of Zeleste, Víctor Jou; the writer Marta Pessarrodona; the architect Xavier Sust; the art critic Victoria Combalia; and the filmmaker Francesc Bellmunt.

Casa Fullà will open its doors on Saturday from 4 pm to 7 pm. Guided tours are available without prior registration.

This house was designed by architect Joan Amigó i Barriga, commissioned by Enric Mir i Carreras, known as Mir Ric, a partner of Joan Gamper in the Cafès Mir-Gamper partnership. For the architect, Mauricio Plan, reflects how a generation of architects "for whom modernism had already been stripped of its political and social connotations offered unexplored possibilities in the arrangement of facades and the use of ornamental repertoire." More specifically, the cylindrical pinnacles with abstract ornamentation on the facade, the profile of the roof, and the galleries on the top floor reflect the influence of Scottish architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh. "The facade takes on a graphic, drawn character, favored by the fact that it is a low-rise, semi-detached house," emphasizes Pla. The house has been purchased by the Fundació Llegat Roca i Pi and will be renovated to house its headquarters.

The Enric Mir Carreras House will be open on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Guided tours are subject to availability.

Barça entrusted the construction of the Joan Gamper sports complex in Sant Joan Despí and the Johan Cruyff stadium, designed for women's, reserve and youth football matches, to the same firm, Batlle & Roig. In the case of the stadium, despite having a capacity for only 6,000 people, the desire to ensure the facilities met the requirements of a UEFA Category III stadium necessitated the construction of an elevated stand for televisions, lighting, and viewing areas. VIP, etc. For the architects, the stadium's asymmetrical design is linked to the club's history because Johan Cruyff recalls Barça's first ground, on Calle Indústria.

The stadium will be open on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 4 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Guided tour without prior registration.

This tower is worth a visit for its history alone: the attribution to Ramon Puig Gairalt has been questioned because the finished work does not match the plans, and it has never been entirely clear what exactly happened. Furthermore, in the early years of Rationalism, this building displays a curious blend of a Cubist multitude of volumes and classic Noucentisme style. The house is located on the corner of Ronda de la Torrassa and Carrer Rafael Campalans, an area of new residential and middle-class neighborhoods resulting from the industrialization of Hospitalet de Llobregat. The house's expansion meant the elimination of the garden. It currently houses an occupational center coordinated by the Pere Mitjans Foundation.

It will be open on Sundays from 12 to 4 p.m. Guided tour without prior registration.

The so-called "houses with a body" (alongsides) are a very common type of housing in Catalonia from the 17th century to the first third of the 20th century. They are rectangular houses, in which the two longer sides are the dividing walls, and the two shorter sides are the two facades: the street and the interior. These buildings had three parts. The ground floor could house a warehouse or shop, the kitchen with the dining room, and a living area. The first floor contained the bedrooms. The third area was the exit. The House on the Street, by the NUS architecture and spaces studio, is the renovation of the complex known as Cal Sr. Soler, which includes houses numbers 5 and 7 on Dr. Martí Soler Street. The intervention consisted of reinterpreting the spaces of the house with a body while maintaining its characteristic elements, such as the modernist arches and hydraulic paving.

The House on the Street will be open on Sunday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Guided tours without prior registration.

A new addition to the collection of spectacular views offered by the 48h Open House Barcelona each year. The bell tower of the Baroque church of San Bartolomé y Santa Tecla is a neoclassical construction, with a dome, pinnacles, and an image of the Immaculate Conception crowning it at over 40 meters high. A visit to the bell tower is also a great opportunity to delve into the church's artistic heritage, which includes Baroque altarpieces, murals by Pere Pruna and Darius Vilàs, sculptures by Pere Jou, and a Baroque organ from 1697. You can also see a Renaissance altarpiece of San Bartolomé and Santa Tecla, as well as medieval tombs.

The bell tower will be open on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Guided tour without prior registration.