A hillside former village of low stucco houses behind walled gardens, quiet sloping streets meeting at a stone church square and a covered iron and brick market. Its streets and a modernista civic centre appear throughout the TV3 series Merlí.
What Sarrià looks like
runs as a pedestrian street, closed to cars. Two and three storey houses in painted stucco and stone line it, several set behind walled gardens with wrought iron gates. It opens onto , a stone paved square where the parish church of Sant Vicenç stands in pale stone, an octagonal bell tower rising from one corner of its neoclassical facade.
A few streets south, the fills a corner in exposed iron and brick, its market hall roofline visible above the surrounding houses. Close by, a row of low white plastered houses with stone door surrounds repeats a single design along a quiet residential street with barely any traffic.
On the sloping streets further up, among them and , detached houses carry sgraffito plasterwork and tiled roof eaves. Shuttered windows are common, and each house sits back behind its own low wall and iron railing. Higher still, larger villas and former estates sit behind stone perimeter walls with gated entrances. Some are now schools or residence halls, their grounds shaded by pine and palm trees. The FGC suburban rail line runs along the edge of this upper section, in a cutting lined with metal acoustic barriers, mostly below street level.
Shot in Sarrià
The Catalan series Merlí, which ran on TV3 from 2015 to 2018, filmed extensively on Sarrià's own streets across its three seasons. Its regular bar, Can Pau, sits at a real address on Plaça de Sant Vicenç de Sarrià. A churro stand at the corner of Passeig de la Bonanova and Via Augusta also appears in several episodes.
Merlí, 2015 to 2018
This modernista civic centre, with stained glass windows and green trimmed bay windows behind an iron fence, stood in for exterior scenes near Sarrià's train station. The production used its Via Augusta facade a few streets from the churro stand at Passeig de la Bonanova.
What Sarrià can double for
Coral Gables, Florida
Coral Gables' stucco villas, mostly dating to the 1920s, are Mediterranean Revival in style. They are finished in cream and ochre, with red tile roofs and arched openings behind low garden walls. Its curving residential streets sit at the same quiet, low rise scale as the side streets here. Coral Gables plants queen and royal palms rather than the plane and pine trees seen here, and its wider streets carry American road markings and mailboxes that would need dressing out. Try searching Mediterranean Revival stucco villas now.
Santa Barbara, California
Santa Barbara's hillside streets, built mostly in the 1920s, have the same Spanish Colonial Revival stucco walls and red tile roofs set behind garden walls on sloping ground. Wrought iron balconies and shuttered windows repeat from house to house, much as they do here. Santa Barbara's hills are more exposed and its lots run larger, so a tight street level frame holds the match better than a wide shot. Its stucco also tends toward white rather than the ochre and brown seen here. Try searching Spanish Colonial Revival stucco walls now.
Cimiez, the hillside district above Nice, has Belle Époque villas behind walled gardens on quiet sloping streets. Balconies and shuttered windows repeat on painted stucco facades, and pine and palm trees line its walls in much the same way. French road signage, brighter painted shutters and different balcony ironwork patterns would need attention in tighter shots. Try searching villas behind walled gardens now.
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