The Plaça del Rei is a stone courtyard enclosed on three sides by the austere, fourteenth-century buildings of the former Royal Palace. Its defining feature is a single, tall, isolated palm tree that rises from the center of the…
Gothic Quarter Medieval History
This walking route takes you through the atmospheric stone alleys and towering monuments of Barcelona's oldest neighborhood, where the dark-stone architecture of the medieval Crown of Aragon still stands strong.
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1. Plaça del Rei
2. Temple d'August
Four massive, fluted Corinthian columns stand wedged into the corner of a medieval courtyard, supporting a heavy stone architrave. This is all that remains of the Temple of Augustus, built in the first century to honor the Roman emperor.…
3. Plaça de Sant Just
The fountain in the center of Plaça de Sant Just is the oldest public water source in Barcelona. It features three stone faces carved into a gothic spire, dating back to thirteen sixty-seven. Legend says that the knight Joan de Fiveller…
4. Plaça de Sant Jaume
Plaça de Sant Jaume is a wide rectangle defined by two marble-faced buildings that stare each other down across the asphalt. On one side stands the Palau de la Generalitat, the seat of the Catalan government, and directly opposite sits the…
5. Pont del Bisbe
The Pont del Bisbe connects the Palau de la Generalitat to the Casa dels Canonges with a heavy, stone-carved facade that hangs over the narrow street below. While the Gothic Quarter dates back centuries, this bridge is a product of the…
6. Cathedral of Barcelona
The Cathedral of the Holy Cross and Saint Eulalia looms over the Plaça Nova with a facade of jagged, neo-Gothic pinnacles that reach toward the clouds. Built over the bones of older Romanesque and Visigothic structures, this site honors a…
7. Plaça de Sant Felip Neri
The walls of the church fronting the square are pockmarked with hundreds of small, jagged indentations. These scars are from an aerial bomb dropped during the Spanish Civil War in nineteen thirty-eight. Most of the people gathered in the…
8. MUHBA El Call
The narrow stone building on Placeta de Manuel Ribé holds a collection of artifacts pulled directly from the medieval Jewish quarter of Barcelona. For centuries, this area was a self-contained neighborhood protected by high walls and…
9. Basílica de Santa Maria del Pi
The Basílica de Santa Maria del Pi is defined by its massive, single-nave interior and a detached, octagonal bell tower that reaches high above the surrounding neighborhood. Built in the fourteenth century, the church sits on a site where…