Elegance in Green: A Stroll Through the Jardins de Terramar
Where history, harmony, and Mediterranean charm come together under the trees
This morning’s walk took me, once again, to a place I never tire of: the Jardins de Terramar in Sitges. Nestled between the sea and the golf course, this green enclave always feels like a quiet breath of elegance—timeless, familiar, and utterly Sitges. While most people think of Sitges in Mediterranean blues and whites, this park reminds me that it’s also a town painted in rich, quiet greens.
At first glance, it’s just a beautiful park: a pond with lily pads and stone benches, paths under the shade of pines and palms, children playing, couples strolling. But once you dig a little deeper—sometimes literally, as your feet crunch along its gravel paths—you realize that this place carries a surprising amount of history beneath its branches.
The gardens were inaugurated in 1919 as part of the ambitious Terramar Garden City project—an urban vision rooted in the garden city movement that was sweeping parts of Europe in the early 20th century. The goal? To create a more balanced, harmonious kind of urban living, where nature was not just decoration, but a fundamental part of everyday life.
Architect Josep Maria Martino oversaw the overall design, while Josep Artigas handled decorative elements, Salvador Robert took care of the gardening, and the ever-versatile Miquel Utrillo brought his artistic eye to the layout of the gardens themselves. It’s Utrillo’s touch that you feel here: the Noucentista elegance, that early 20th-century Catalan classicism that moved away from the extravagance of modernisme and toward something calmer, more orderly—yet still deeply poetic.
And that poetry is everywhere, even now. The central pond, with its slightly worn stone border, still gives off an old-world charm. The wind rustling through the trees, the crunch of footsteps on gravel, the distant sound of waves from Les Anquines beach—it all adds to the park’s quiet soundtrack. There’s no rush here. You find your pace. You sit longer than planned.
Originally, this was to be the heart of a much grander plan—a seaside casino was even envisioned, reachable from the beach. That never came to be, but the gardens remain, and in many ways, they’re enough. More than enough.
Today, the Jardins de Terramar still serve their purpose—not just as a beautiful public space, but as a kind of green pause in the rhythm of Sitges life. Whether you’re a local out for a walk (like me), a visitor stumbling upon it by chance, or someone attending one of the open-air summer concerts during the Festival Jardins de Terramar, this park continues to offer exactly what its creators hoped for: a place to breathe, to connect, to slow down.
It’s hard to think of anything more 100% Sitges than that.