Parc del Fòrum

This guide to Parc del Forum in Barcelona goes back to the summer of 2004, when mayor Joan Clos staged a Universal Forum of Cultures here, complete with a specially bulldozed neighborhood, a colossal blue triangular building, and names like Mikhail Gorbachev and Angelina Jolie attached to the cause. You'll hear how the promised millions of visitors compared to who actually turned up, and the arguments over cost and ambition that followed. Look up at the tilted solar canopy overhead, raised on stilts above the plaza, and consider what it was built to power.