Parc de la Ciutadella takes its name from a building that was pulled down to make it. A star-shaped fortress stood here after the siege of 1714, on ground cleared of the Ribera quarter's houses; the land passed to the city and demolition began in 1869. Josep Fontserè, a master builder rather than a licensed architect, won the competition to turn the empty ground into the city's first public park, submitting under a motto calling parks the lungs of a city. He laid out the lake, the promenades and the tiered Cascada, and put an architecture student named Antoni Gaudí to work on the waterworks.
Three buildings from the years of the 1888 world's fair stand among the trees: a café-castle of bare brick and iron, an iron-and-glass greenhouse, and the Umbracle, a slatted timber shade house full of palms. Around them the park runs loud and ordinary. Monk parakeets screech in the palm crowns, rowing boats cross the lake, drums start up on Sunday afternoons, and children queue to climb a life-size mammoth. The zoo takes the eastern side, and the citadel's arsenal, never pulled down, now houses Catalonia's parliament.