El Born and La Ribera

The Palau de la Música Catalana features a corner balcony anchored by a massive stone sculpture of a maiden, her hand reaching toward the sky beneath a dense canopy of floral mosaics. Lluís Domènech i Montaner designed this concert hall…

The wavy, multicolored roof made of over three hundred thousand hexagonal ceramic tiles defines the Mercat de Santa Caterina. It covers a structure built over the ruins of a medieval convent that burned down in the nineteenth century. When…

The Capella d'en Marcús stands apart because of its solitary, small-scale stone facade tucked into a corner where the city's medieval layout tightens. Bernat Marcús, a wealthy merchant, funded this chapel in the twelfth century to serve…

Carrer de Montcada features a row of medieval stone palaces with grand arched courtyards and ornate Gothic windows. In the fourteenth century, the merchant elite of Barcelona built these residences to display their wealth from…

The Basilica of Santa Maria del Mar features walls of unadorned stone that rise sharply above the dense surrounding streets. Sailors and dockworkers funded this church during the fourteenth century, constructing it in a style known as…

A flickering flame burns eternally inside a tall, arched steel monument at the Fossar de les Moreres. This public square rests on ground where the defenders of Barcelona were buried after the city fell to Bourbon forces in seventeen…

Passeig del Born is a wide, tree-lined promenade that cuts through the dense medieval fabric of the El Born neighborhood. It is defined by the massive, austere stone facade of the Santa Maria del Mar church at one end and the open, airy…

The El Born Centre de Cultura i Memòria occupies a massive, cast-iron structure with a distinct, airy roof that once served as the city’s central market. Beneath the floor lies a sprawling archaeological site from the eighteenth century,…