The Catedral de la Santa Creu i Santa Eulàlia in Barcelona is one of the city’s most iconic monuments and has as many unusual features as it has stones. Its walls conceal stories of ancient Barcelona and its facade is one of the most photographed. The cloister, with the white geese of Santa Eulàlia, the five access doors, the ou com balla (dancing egg) and the 200 gargoyles that keep watch from the roof are some of the things to be discovered. The Gothic cathedral is more than a place of worship, it is a legend and one of the city’s main attractions.

With perfect proportions, sober, elegant and upstanding, the basilica of Santa Maria del Mar in Barcelona is the best example of Catalan Gothic architecture. Legend says that there are as many stones as the days that were needed to raise the building. Stones that were loaded and transported by the harbour porters from Montjuïc mountain to the sandy La Ribera neighbourhood to construct their “cathedral”.

Bàrcino, a colony founded in the time of Augustus, became the hub of a stable community and at the end of the 3rd century, Emperor Claudius decided to strengthen the primitive wall. This second wall followed the outline of the earlier one but was thicker and considerably taller. Around 75 watchtowers were also built.

In the heart of the Gòtic neighborhood is Plaza Sant Felip Neri, where there is also the baroque church that gives it its name and which was affected by the bombings of 1938.

Uniting the Casa dels Canonges and the Palau de la Generalitat, the Pont del Bisbe is a large marble structure with lovely Gothic-style columns. It’s also covered in interesting designs that help add to the overall feel.

The opening of the Gran Teatre del Liceu in 1847 was a decisive factor in the construction, the following year, of a square mainly for the wealthy bourgeois families living in the area. It was designed by the architect Francesc Daniel Molina on the site previously occupied by the old Capuchin convent and is one of very few porticoed squares in Barcelona.