In the Eixample there's a door on Roger de Llúria that leads into a garden you can't see from any street. Inside there's a brick tower from 1867, trees, benches, and an empty pool. For three decades that pool was a public swimming pool residents called 'la platja de l'Eixample' — a beach ten kilometres from the sea, in the courtyard of a city block. It closed in 2018, and since then the garden has stayed open but the water hasn't. It's one of Barcelona's strangest and most beautiful spots, and a whole lesson in how this city was built.
A tower so water could reach the upper floors
The story starts in 1862, when the land was handed over to the Sociedad Ensanche y Mejora de Barcelona, which commissioned architect Josep Oriol Mestres to build a tower capable of guaranteeing the drinking-water supply in the area. The original plan called for a hexagonal tower 24 metres tall with capacity for 730 m³, but the municipal architect didn't approve it for exceeding the 20-metre maximum height allowed.
The permit was finally signed on 30 May 1867, once it was accepted that there was no other way to guarantee water pressure in the taller buildings. A 20-horsepower steam engine installed in an adjoining building — later electrified — pumped water from the well up to the tank. In 1870 the tower was raised by one more floor to gain pressure. It's pure 19th-century infrastructure, and it's still standing in the middle of a garden.
The block interior Cerdà actually wanted
The garden occupies the interior of a block between Consell de Cent, Diputació, Roger de Llúria, and Bruc. It's one of the few examples of a landscaped block interior built the way Ildefons Cerdà envisioned when he designed the Eixample: blocks with a free, green centre, not built up to the last metre. Twentieth-century speculation swallowed up almost all the others.
The council acquired the space in 1987 and opened it to the public. Walking in here means walking into the version of the Eixample that never came to be: the one drawn up but never built. Other block interiors are being recovered across the city, but this one, with its tower in the middle, tells the story best.
The beach that closed over noise
For around thirty years, the pool filled with water in summer and worked as a small public swimming pool, mostly for children. Residents nicknamed it 'la platja de l'Eixample,' and the name stuck. It closed in 2018 following complaints and restrictions over the noise bathers generated — a very Barcelona conflict: an interior courtyard amplifies sound, and people live around it.
The story isn't entirely closed. In May 2025 the Eixample district council approved setting up a monitoring committee, with political groups, residents' associations, and municipal technicians, to study whether reopening the pool is feasible. As of today nothing has been decided: if you go, go to see the garden and the tower, not to swim.
How to get there, and why it's worth it
You enter through Roger de Llúria, in the Dreta de l'Eixample, and hours change with the season: 10:00 am to 7:00 pm in winter (1 November to 31 March) and 10:00 am to 9:00 pm in summer (1 April to 31 October). It's free. It's worth checking the hours before you go, since block interiors change their schedule more easily than a large park does.
It's a short walk from Colmado Múrria, on the same Carrer Roger de Llúria, so the combination is obvious: shop at an 1898 store and have a snack in a hidden garden with an 1867 tower beside it. For anyone living in Barcelona for a few months, this is the find that changes your relationship with the neighbourhood: discovering that behind the Eixample's closed façades there are courtyards, and some of them are open. You just have to know which door to push.