Barcelona

The Vil·la Cecília Gardens are located on the land of an old rural estate, Cal Noyu, which was purchased in 1909 by Eduardo Conde, the founder of the El Siglo department store, the first of its kind established in Barcelona. Conde named the villa Cecília after his wife. The land was taken over by the City Council in 1969 and turned into a park.
Part of today’s green space used to belong to the old Vil·la Amèlia Gardens, which are located right next to it and are now for public use. The building, Eduardo Conde’s former residence, now houses the Casal de Sarrià Civic Centre.

Aleppo and stone pines (Pinus halepensis and pinea), cypresses (Cupresus sempervirens) and Canary Island date palms (Phoenix canariensis) are but a few examples.
Other notable trees include plane trees (Platanus hispanica), lime trees (Tilia x europaea), cedars (Cedrus deodara), peppercorn trees (Schinus molle), Siberian elms
(Ulmus pumila) and trees of heaven (Ailanthus altissima). The civic centre is by a jelly palm Butia capitata, a tree rarely found in Barcelona. As for shrubs, it is the sweet bays (Laurus nobilis) that stand out.
The gardens have cabin-shaped cypress hedges. A small village of vegetation that starts from C/ Santa Amèlia and ends at the square that the civic centre stands on.
Open spaces and grass parterres sit side by side in a labyrinthine structure, with shaded paths and peaceful spots for sitting in. By way of a contrast, there is a tarmac surface at one end, dominated by a small palm grove.

A bronze statue made by Francisco López Hernández in 1964, depicting a drowned Ofèlia (Ophelia), lies face down in the water channel that begins to the right of the C/ Santa Amèlia entrance. Here several large metallic leaves of a maidenhair tree (Ginkgo biloba) join together in a kind of arch which greets visitors as it climbs up from the channel. It was designed by the architects who redeveloped the gardens: Elías Torres and José Antonio Martínez Lapeña.
They also designed the park’s wood-over-stone-wheel benches recalling skates and very tall lamps inspired by trees. Two design elements that won a FAD decorative arts prize in 1986.
Another of the park’s attractions is that it is designed for older people. There is a recreational area where they can exercise their joints and improve their agility with bars at various heights, loops for getting fingers moving and gentle ramps, among other things, exercise that enriches their daily walks.