El Born is one of those Barcelona neighborhoods that never stops surprising you. No matter how many times you’ve walked its streets: if you go with your camera and know where to look, you’ll always find something new. This is not your typical tourist guide. It’s the route I follow with my clients on the El Born photo tour — the spots that don’t appear in brochures, the angles that can only be discovered when you’ve spent years photographing this neighborhood.
The cloister of the Archivo de la Corona de Aragón: El Born's best kept secret
Most people walking along Carrer dels Comtes don’t even know it exists. But if you climb the stairs of the Archivo de la Corona de Aragón and reach the first floor, you’ll find one of the most photogenic spaces in all of Barcelona: a cloister with ogival arch galleries, where light enters from the inner courtyard and bounces off the ribbed vaults creating a depth that cries out for a wide-angle lens.
💡 My tip: go mid-morning, when the sun enters obliquely from the courtyard and the shadows add dimension to the arches. Frame from the corner to achieve the double perspective of the two corridors in flight.
Rarely visited by tourists, hard to find on Google, impossible to forget once you’ve seen it.
Hofmann: one of El Born's most famous pastry shops
Who doesn’t love something sweet? I certainly do, and that’s why I always include stops to recharge on my tours. Barcelona is full of places that, as well as satisfying your palate, are perfect for photographing — and Pastisseria Hofmann is one of the best examples.
Leaving the Archivo de la Corona de Aragón and heading down towards Santa Maria del Mar, Carrer dels Flassaders gives you one of those moments where your nose arrives before your eyes. Pastisseria Hofmann, at number 44, is one of the most recognised pastry shops in Barcelona — and one of the most photographed, and rightly so.
Their pieces look like they’ve come from a jewellery display: mirror-finish chocolates, perfectly geometric cakes, croissants that need no filter. If you have a macro lens or get close enough with your objective, the textures of the chocolate coating and the shine of the glazes will give you images that shine on any social network.
💡 My tip: order the mascarpone croissant, sit down on Carrer dels Flassaders itself with your camera ready and capture that moment of pleasure. This cobblestone street makes any photo with everyday details — a coffee, a pastry, a croissant — so much richer.
📍 Pastisseria Hofmann open Monday to Saturday 9:00am – 8:00pm, Sundays until 7:00pm.
Santa Maria del Mar: how to photograph the people's cathedral
We continue our route at a church that captures the soul of Barcelona. Santa Maria del Mar was built between 1329 and 1383 by the people of the La Ribera neighbourhood themselves — every citizen contributed their work — and it is the masterpiece of Catalan Gothic architecture and one of the best photography spots in the city.
From the interior, the challenge is mastering the contrast between the darkness of the side naves and the light coming through the rose windows. Use manual mode, expose for the stained glass and let the stone be slightly underexposed: the result has a cinematic depth that automatic modes can never achieve.
My tip: the framing I love most, and that few people know about, is the ceiling. Stand at the crossing of the naves with your lens pointing directly upwards: the ribbed vaults open up like a medieval stone flower above your head. You’ll get a unique shot of a place visited by thousands of people every day, that very few actually see.
To photograph the apse of Santa Maria del Mar from the outside, the best angle is from the Fossar de les Moreres. At dawn, with the raking light touching the columns and the stained glass lit from within, you have one of the most spectacular framings in the neighbourhood — without a single tourist in the frame.
Estació de França: El Born's most unknown interior
Five minutes’ walk away, right next to Parc de la Ciutadella, is Estació de França. Most people use it to catch trains to the Costa Brava. Very few stop to look up.
The central hall has a coffered dome with a zenithal eye of light, marble floors that reflect the moving figures and a perfect symmetry that turns any photo into a composition effortlessly. One of the best spots for architectural photography in Barcelona, especially in vertical format: lean against a column to stabilise yourself and shoot towards the dome with a wide-angle lens. The perspective effect you get is on another level — and almost nobody has it in their portfolio.
Brunells: the award-winning croissant you can't miss in El Born
Second sweet stop, and this one has history. Pastisseria Brunells, at Carrer de la Princesa, 22, has been delighting Born residents since 1852 — and in a neighbourhood that changes every season, that already says a lot. It’s still one of those places that Barcelona locals don’t usually mention to tourists but visit themselves every weekend.
Their butter croissant was awarded Best Artisan Butter Croissant in Spain in 2020. And yes, it’s just as photogenic as it is delicious: perfect layers, golden colour, a piece that speaks for itself visually. Photographically, the interior has a classic bakery aesthetic that gives a lot of scope with shallow depth of field — a 50mm at f/1.8 with the display case as background does the work on its own.
But the best thing about Brunells is the pause. On the tour, this is the point where we slow down, order something sweet, review the photos from the first stretch and decide what we want to achieve in the second. The best moments of the tour often happen here, with a cup of coffee in hand and the neighbourhood moving on the other side of the glass.
📍 Pastisseria Brunells — Carrer de la Princesa, 22. Open every day 9:00am – 8:00pm.
Carrer de l'Esquirol, La Carassa and La Bodega del Born: the nocturnal labyrinth
This is where nocturnal El Born becomes truly magical. These three locations, a few minutes apart, are the medieval heart of the neighbourhood and offer three completely different types of framing.
Carrer de l’Esquirol is incredible at any time, but if you manage to photograph it just after it’s rained, it’s another dimension entirely. The golden stars hanging between the buildings are reflected in the wet cobblestones and create an atmosphere that can’t be manufactured. Use a tripod, shoot around 1600 ISO with the aperture at f/2.8 and look for the reflection in the puddles as the main compositional element.
The La Carassa passage is pure vanishing perspective: a narrow alleyway with an arch at the far end, wrought iron lanterns and that mix of urban graffiti with medieval architecture that perfectly captures the character of the neighbourhood.
And to close the nocturnal stretch, La Bodega del Born: one of those framings that seems impossible until you see it. The bodega sign in the foreground, and at the end of the alleyway, perfectly framed, the Gothic doorway of Santa Maria del Mar illuminated. No cars, no people, in the small hours. One of my favourite photos in the whole of Barcelona.
Moco Museum: when urban art moves into a medieval palace
The last stop on this route is the Moco Museum Barcelona, located in the Palau Cervelló, a 15th century palace in the very heart of El Born. The combination of the stone architecture of the outer courtyard and the contemporary art sculptures — like the enormous KAWS figure that dominates the space — offers one of the most powerful visual contrasts in the city.
The trick is to look for the human scale: a person standing next to the giant sculpture, with the medieval arches in the background. The tension between the ancient and the contemporary becomes visual narrative on its own. You don’t need to do anything special — just wait for the moment and frame it well.
Phototour Barcelona
Want to discover these corners with your camera?
Everything you see in these photos — the angles, the light, the moments — is what we work on in the El Born Photo Tour. A guided route led by a local professional photographer, in small groups, adapted to your level and your camera.
It’s not a tourist tour. It’s a photography class with Barcelona as the classroom.
