La Rambla is Barcelona's most famous street, and it has been many things before it became that.

It started as a stream running down from the mountains, skirting the edges of the old Roman settlement of Barcino on its way to the sea. By the 1300s, religious orders had claimed the banks, and what tourists now stroll along was once a convent orchard, well-watered by the stream beneath it. The convents held on until the 1700s, when the courts reclaimed the land for public use.

Today, it's a kilometre-long meeting point for the world, lively and occasionally light-fingered. Keep your valuables zipped away. La Rambla sits between the Gothic Quarter and El Raval, and VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours use it as a gateway to both neighbourhoods, tracing the street's evolution from stream to orchard to the social spine of the city.