Barcelona, Spain – This photograph offers a sweeping aerial view of Sarrià, in Barcelona, at a time when the neighbourhood still boasted large estates, gardens and open spaces. On the right, the buildings of the Salesian house are clearly visible: the tower of the Shrine of Mary Help of Christians, which stands out for its distinctive appearance, and the buildings of the complex comprising that great work, which included the Vocational Schools, the Santo Ángel College and the Provincial Headquarters of the then Province of Tarragona (the Can Prats estate where Dorothea de Chopitea hosted St John Bosco in 1886), lined up along the Paseo de San Juan Bosco, where at the time there were still tram tracks and a young row of trees. On the left, however, one can see a large estate owned by the Marquis of San Ramón, known as ‘la Boscosa’, a large historic stately home in Sarrià, with a garden designed by the French landscape architect Jean Claude Nicolas Forestier. With the growth of Barcelona and the incorporation of Sarrià into the city, this type of rural and wooded property disappeared or was transformed into urbanised plots, so the name has fallen into disuse and is no longer clearly identifiable in the current neighbourhood.
