Barri Gòtic: The City Under the Gothic Quarter

Constructed primarily thirteen nineteen to thirteen ninety-one on Romanesque foundations first documented in nine eighty-seven, consecrated fourteen fifty-three. Single broad nave fifty-four by sixteen and a half metres. Partial funding from King Pere the Third the Ceremonious. Damaged in the fourteen twenty-eight earthquake and the nineteen thirty-six fire of the Spanish Civil War.

Italian Legionary Aviation, allied with Franco's Nationalists, bombed Barcelona on the morning of the thirtieth of January nineteen thirty-eight between nine and twenty past eleven. Two bombs near the church of Sant Felip Neri killed forty-two people, most of them children sheltering inside. The shrapnel scars on the façade were preserved as memorial. Per the Ajuntament de Barcelona Memòria Democràtica programme, the Francoist firing-squad explanation is formally refuted.

Medieval Gothic foundations laid the first of May twelve ninety-eight, cloister completed fourteen forty-eight, total span about one hundred and fifty years. The west façade designed eighteen eighty-seven to eighteen ninety by Josep Oriol Mestres from an unbuilt fourteen oh-eight drawing by master Carlí. The central seventy-metre dome built nineteen oh-six to nineteen thirteen by August Font i Carreras. Funded by Manuel Girona i Agrafel and his children. Per the Catedral de Barcelona official history, the COAC architect record, and the Eviterna University of Málaga academic article.

Built nineteen twenty-eight by Joan Rubió i Bellver, a former apprentice of Antoni Gaudí on Sagrada Família and Casa Batlló, in deliberate neo-Gothic style as a stage-set element for the nineteen twenty-nine International Exposition. Rubió's nineteen twenty-seven master plan to demolish every non-Gothic building around the cathedral was rejected by the city; only this footbridge was approved. Adjacent Casa dels Canonges restoration nineteen twenty-seven to nineteen twenty-nine by Jeroni Martorell in collaboration with Rubió. Per Cócola Gant two thousand and fourteen, the Generalitat de Catalunya institutional page, and the Diputació de Barcelona SPAL record.

The square sits on the footprint of the Roman forum of Barcino, at the intersection of the cardo maximus and the decumanus maximus. Today its opposing buildings are the Palau de la Generalitat, with a medieval core and much sixteenth to twentieth-century reworking, and the Ajuntament, with a medieval Saló de Cent core and a nineteenth-century neoclassical façade. The Jewish quarter, El Call, was attacked in the pogrom of the fifth of August thirteen ninety-one, about three hundred dead, the community effectively destroyed. Per the Wikipedia record of the Jewish quarter and Barcelona Lowdown, abandoned synagogue stones were repurposed into the Royal Palace and the new Generalitat building.

Four surviving Corinthian columns of the temple dedicated to Augustus, on the summit of Mons Taber at the heart of Roman Barcino. The temple was hexastyle, with six front columns and approximately thirty-four in total, roughly thirty-seven metres long and seventeen metres wide. Three columns were rediscovered during late nineteenth-century construction of the Centre Excursionista de Catalunya building; the fourth was moved from Plaça del Rei to complete the group. MUHBA branch site, free entry. Per the MUHBA Temple d'August page and Wikipedia's record of the Temple of Augustus.

Underground, the MUHBA-managed Roman city ruins occupy about four thousand square metres beneath the square, exposed from nineteen thirty-one to nineteen thirty-two when Casa Padellàs was relocated stone-by-stone from Mercaders Street to escape Via Laietana demolition. Above ground, the medieval Palau Reial Major includes the Saló del Tinell, built thirteen fifty-nine to thirteen seventy by master builder Guillem Carbonell on commission of King Pere the Third the Ceremonious, the Capella Reial de Santa Àgata, and the fifteenth-century Mirador del Rei Martí. The museum itself was inaugurated on the fourteenth of April nineteen forty-three under the Francoist regime, founding director Agustí Duran i Sanpere. Per the MUHBA Plaça del Rei page, the Arquitectura Catalana Casa Padellàs file, the Wikipedia record of Plaça del Rei and Peter IV of Aragon, and the DARA Aragón institutional record.