Plaça de les Glòries Catalanes

Plaça de les Glòries Catalanes, most often shortened to Glòries, is a large square in Barcelona, first designed by Ildefons Cerdà to serve as the city centre in his original urban plan (Pla Cerdà), but nowadays relegated to quite a secondary position. It is located in the Sant Martí district, bordering Eixample, at the junction of three of the city's most important thoroughfares: Avinguda Diagonal, Avinguda Meridiana and Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes. Currently it serves largely as a roundabout of elevated highways. However, beginning in the early 2000s, and as of 2007, revamping project for Glòries has started, which is aimed to give the square a new role in Barcelona and revitalize the northern districts of the city, under the name 22@. These plans supplement other large-scale plans in Sagrera and the Fòrum area. The first installment of this project was the construction of the controversial Torre Agbar skyscraper.HistoryPlaça de les Glòries, which was then well outside the city, was originally featured in the mid-19th-century Cerdà plan for Barcelona, intended as a large public square in a new city centre, but it remained sparsely developed, turning into one of Barcelona's major road and railway junctions. Eventually the railways were closed or went underground, and around 1990 the road junction was reshaped into the current large elevated roundabout with a park at its centre, with pedestrian access beneath the roads.